Abstract
The nanoscale mode volumes of surface plasmon polaritons have enabled plasmonic lasers and condensates with ultrafast operation1,2,3,4. Most plasmonic lasers are based on noble metals, rendering the optical mode structure inert to external fields. Here we demonstrate active magnetic-field control over lasing in a periodic array of Co/Pt multilayer nanodots immersed in an IR-140 dye solution. We exploit the magnetic nature of the nanoparticles combined with mode tailoring to control the lasing action. Under circularly polarized excitation, angle-resolved photoluminescence measurements reveal a transition between the lasing action and non-lasing emission as the nanodot magnetization is reversed. Our results introduce magnetization as a means of externally controlling plasmonic nanolasers, complementary to modulation by excitation5, gain medium6,7 or substrate8. Further, the results show how the effects of magnetization on light that are inherently weak can be observed in the lasing regime, inspiring studies of topological photonics9,10,11.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Academy of Finland (grant nos. 303351, 307419, 316857 and 327293) and by the Centre for Quantum Engineering (CQE) at Aalto University. F.F.-F. acknowledges financial support from the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (Vilho, Yrjö and Kalle Väisälä Fund). Lithography was performed at the OtaNano–Micronova Nanofabrication Centre, supported by Aalto University. K.S.D acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant no. 948260). J.C. acknowledges support by the Academy of Finland under project no. 325608 (SPATUNANO). We thank J. Taskinen and N. Kuznetsov for help with the experiments. We acknowledge the computational resources provided by the Aalto Science-IT project.
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F.F.-F. and S.P. fabricated the samples and characterized the optical and magneto-optical response of the square and rectangular plasmonic lattices. F.F.-F. and S.P. performed the lasing experiments and K.S.D. oversaw these measurements. P.T., J.C., F.F.-F., J.-P.M. and K.A. worked on the theory analysis. P.T. and S.v.D. supervised the work. F.F.-F., P.T. and S.v.D. wrote the manuscript with inputs from all the authors.
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Freire-Fernández, F., Cuerda, J., Daskalakis, K.S. et al. Magnetic on–off switching of a plasmonic laser. Nat. Photon. 16, 27–32 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-021-00922-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-021-00922-8
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