Theory of light amplification in active fishnet metamaterials

Abstract

We establish a theory that traces light amplification in an active double-fishnet metamaterial back to its microscopic origins. Based on ab initio calculations of the light/plasmon fields we extract energy rates and conversion efficiencies associated with gain/loss channels directly from Poynting's theorem. We find that for the negative refactive index mode both radiative loss and gain outweigh resistive loss by more than a factor of two, opening a broad window of steady-state amplification (free of instabilities) accessible even when a gain reduction close to the metal is taken into account.

Physical Review Letters, in press

References in corpus (3)

• Overcoming losses with gain in a negative refractive index metamaterial
• Self-consistent calculations of loss compensated fishnet metamaterials
• Theory of fishnet negative-index optical metamaterials

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