Thresholdless nanoscale coaxial lasers
Thresholdless nanoscale coaxial lasers
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DOI：
10.1038/nature10840
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发表时间：
2012-02-09
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Fainman, Y.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Khajavikhan, M.;Simic, A.;Fainman, Y.
腔量子电动力学（QED）的影响，由物质和电磁场在亚波长共振结构中的相互作用引起的，近年来一直是激烈的研究主题（1）。通过亚波长共振结构产生相干辐射引起了人们极大的兴趣，不仅作为探索小体积出现的QED效应的手段，而且其在从片上光通信到超高分辨率和高通量成像、传感和光谱学的应用中的潜力。其中一项研究旨在开发“终极”纳米激光器：一种可扩展的，低阈值的，高效的辐射源，在室温下工作，在芯片上占据很小的体积。已经提出了用于实现这种纳米激光器-微盘（3）和光子带隙（4）谐振器的不同谐振器，并且最近提出了金属（5，6）、金属电介质（7-10）和等离子体激元（11，12）谐振器。但是，由于缺乏一种系统的方法来缩小激光腔的尺寸，而不显着增加激光发射所需的阈值功率，因此实现最终纳米激光器的进展受到阻碍。在这里，我们描述了一个家庭的同轴纳米结构腔，潜在地解决了谐振器的可扩展性的挑战，通过它们的几何形状和金属成分。使用这些同轴纳米腔，我们证明了最小的室温，连续波倍频激光器的日期。此外，通过进一步修改这些同轴纳米腔的设计，我们实现了宽带增益介质的无阈值激光。除了实现激光应用之外，这些纳米级谐振器应该为其他QED器件和超材料的开发提供强大的平台，其中原子场相互作用产生新的功能（13，14）。
The effects of cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED), caused by the interaction of matter and the electromagnetic field in subwavelength resonant structures, have been the subject of intense research in recent years(1). The generation of coherent radiation by subwavelength resonant structures has attracted considerable interest, not only as a means of exploring the QED effects that emerge at small volume, but also for its potential in applications ranging from on-chip optical communication to ultrahigh-resolution and high-throughput imaging, sensing and spectroscopy. One such strand of research is aimed at developing the 'ultimate' nanolaser: a scalable, low-threshold, efficient source of radiation that operates at room temperature and occupies a small volume on a chip(2). Different resonators have been proposed for the realization of such a nanolaser-microdisk(3) and photonic bandgap(4) resonators, and, more recently, metallic(5,6), metallodielectric(7-10) and plasmonic(11,12) resonators. But progress towards realizing the ultimate nanolaser has been hindered by the lack of a systematic approach to scaling down the size of the laser cavity without significantly increasing the threshold power required for lasing. Here we describe a family of coaxial nanostructured cavities that potentially solve the resonator scalability challenge by means of their geometry and metal composition. Using these coaxial nanocavities, we demonstrate the smallest room-temperature, continuous-wave telecommunications-frequency laser to date. In addition, by further modifying the design of these coaxial nanocavities, we achieve thresholdless lasing with a broadband gain medium. In addition to enabling laser applications, these nanoscale resonators should provide a powerful platform for the development of other QED devices and metamaterials in which atom-field interactions generate new functionalities(13,14).