Ultrafast Dynamics of Lattice Plasmon Lasers

Weijia Wang, Nicolas Watkins, Ankun Yang, Richard D. Schaller, George C. Schatz*, Teri W. Odom

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

27 Scopus citations

Abstract

Lattice plasmon cavity modes combined with optical gain can exhibit directional and tunable lasing emission at room temperature. However, the mechanistic details governing the dynamics before lasing action are not understood. This paper describes how the long photon lifetimes of lattice plasmon modes can be correlated with the ultrafast dynamics of lasing action and amplified spontaneous emission. Lasing from band-edge plasmons and amplified spontaneous emission from propagating plasmons showed rise times on the order of tens of picoseconds, during which inverted population in the gain was first generated and then followed by energy transfer to the lattice plasmon cavity for enhanced light emission.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)3301-3306
Number of pages6
JournalJournal of Physical Chemistry Letters
Volume10
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 20 2019

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under DMR-1608258 (W.W., N.W, A.Y., G.C.S., T.W.O.). We thank Marc Bourgeois for his assistance in identifying that the calculated lifetimes are different from the measured values because of finite size effects neglected by FDTD simulations. This work made use of the Northwestern University Micro/Nano Fabrication Facility (NUFAB), which is partially supported by the Soft and Hybrid Nanotechnology Experimental (SHyNE) Resource (NSF ECCS-1542205), Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) (DMR-1720139), the State of Illinois, and North-western University. This work made use of the EPIC, Keck-II, and/or SPID facilities of Northwestern University’s NUANCE Center, which has received support from SHyNE (NSF ECCS-1542205), the MRSEC program (NSF DMR-1121262) at the Materials Research Center, the International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN), the Keck Foundation, and the State of Illinois through the IIN. Use of the Center for Nanoscale Materials, an Office of Science user facility, was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. This research was supported in part through the computational resources and staff contributions provided for the Quest high performance computing facility at Northwestern University, which is jointly supported by the Office of the Provost, the Office for Research, and Northwestern University Information Technology.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Materials Science
  • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry

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