| Overview
Nanoscale plasmonic devices can bridge the gap between the optical and electronic transition length scales. This provides a clear path toward realizing nano-LED and nanolaser systems with dimensions that are orders of magnitude smaller than those used in practice today. Nano-optical emitter research at XLab looks at two regimes of nano-scale optical light emitters: a semi-classical regime of spontaneously emitting and laser devices and a quantum regime at the single photon level.
Plasmonic Component Design
Much of our research in this area is made possible by a fundamentally new approach to surface plasmon optics. We have recently reported in Nature Photonics, a hybrid plasmonic waveguide. This is a composite of a high contrast semiconductor waveguide and a plasmon supporting metal-dielectric interface separated by a thin low permittivity dielectric gap.
The coupling between the plasmonic and waveguide modes across the gap allows "capacitor-like" energy storage leading to a sub-wavelength sized mode. The hybrid plasmons of the structure have potentially favorable confinement and propagation characteristics, due to the involvement of the low loss dielectric waveguide
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R. Oulton, V. Sorger, D. A. Genov, D. F. P. Pile, X. Zhang, "A hybrid plasmonic waveguide for subwavelength confinement and long range propagation", Nature Photonics. Vol.2, 496, 2008. view pdf
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