Active Plasmonics and Lossless Metamaterials

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Metal surfaces can support so called surface plasmons, density waves of free electrons. These plasmon waves can interact with light, opening the way to a novel area of optics, namely plasmonics. When the metal surface is nanostructured, a possibility for true nanoscale optics emerges. In this work we aim to alleviate or even remove the unavoidable absorption losses caused by the metal by amplifying the plasmon waves with semiconductor quantum wells and dots, thus demonstrating low-loss plasmonic components. They will be designed by novel electromagnetic simulation methods developed during the project, running on a supercomputer cluster. We will also use this approach to design and fabricate novel wide-band low-loss or even lossless metamaterials, highly promising structures with a negative refractive index that can for example slow or even stop incoming light pulses.