Spaser Action, Loss Compensation, and Stability in Plasmonic Systems with Gain

Abstract

We demonstrate that the conditions of spaser generation and the full loss compensation in a resonant plasmonic-gain medium (metamaterial) are identical. Consequently, attempting the full compensation or overcompensation of losses by gain will lead to instability and a transition to a spaser state. This will limit (clamp) the inversion and lead to the limitation on the maximum loss compensation achievable. The criterion of the loss overcompensation, leading to the instability and spasing, is given in a analytical and universal (independent from system's geometry) form.

4 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (4)

• Room temperature plasmon laser by total internal reflection
• Stimulated emission of surface plasmon polaritons
• Overcoming losses with gain in a negative refractive index metamaterial
• Arrays of Ag split-ring resonators coupled to InGaAs single-quantum-well gain

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