We find the conditions upon the amplitude and frequency of an external electromagnetic field at which the dipole moment of a Bergman-Stockman spaser oscillates in antiphase with the field. For these values of the amplitude and frequency the losses in metal nanoparticles is exactly compensated of by gain. This shows that spasers may be used as inclusions in designing lossless metamaterials.
We demonstrate that when the frequency of the external field differs from the lasing frequency of an autonomous spaser, the spaser exhibits stochastic oscillations at low field intensity. The plasmon oscillations lock to the frequency of the external field only when the field amplitude exceeds a threshold value. We find a region of values of the external field amplitude and the frequency detuning (the Arnold tongue) for which the spaser synchronizes with the external wave.
We show that net amplification of surface plasmons is achieved in channel in a metal plate due to nonradiative excitation by quantum dots. This makes possible lossless plasmon transmission lines in the channel as well as the amplification and generation of coherent surface plasmons. As an example, a ring channel spaser is considered.
We theoretically introduce a topological spaser, which consists of a hexagonal array of plasmonic metal nanoshells containing an achiral gain medium in their cores. Such a spaser can generate two mutually time-reversed chiral surface plasmon modes in the $mathbf K$- and $mathbf K^prime$-valleys, which carry the opposite topological charges, $pm1$, and are described by a two-dimensional $E^{prime}$ representation of the $D_{3h}$ point symmetry group. Due to the mode competition, this spaser exhibits a bistability: only one of these two modes generates, which is a spontaneous symmetry breaking. Such a spaser can be used for an ultrafast all-optical memory and information processing
Due to their many potential applications, there is an increasing interest in studying hybrid systems composed of optically active media and plasmonic metamaterials. In this work we focus on a particular system which consists of an optically active silica core covered by a gold shell. We find that the spaser (surface plasmon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) conditions can be found at the poles of the scattering cross section of the system, a result that remains valid beyond the geometry studied. We explored a wide range of parameters that cover most of the usual experimental conditions in terms of the geometry of the system and the wavelength of excitation. We show that the conditions of spaser generation necessarily require full loss compensation, but the opposite is not necessarily true. Our results, which are independent of the detailed response of the active medium, provide the gain needed and the wavelength of the spasers that can be produced by a particular geometry, discussing also the possibility of turning the system into optical amplifiers and SERS (surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy) substrates with huge enhancements. We believe that our results can find numerous applications. In particular, they can be useful for experimentalists studying similar systems in both, tuning the experimental conditions and interpreting the results.
We study the binding energies and optical properties of direct and indirect excitons in monolayers and double layer heterostructures of Xenes: silicene, germanene, and stanene. It is demonstrated that an external electric field can be used to tune the eigenenergies and optical properties of excitons by changing the effective mass of charge carriers. The Schr{o}dinger equation with field-dependent exciton reduced mass is solved by using the Rytova-Keldysh (RK) potential for direct excitons, while both the RK and Coulomb potentials are used for indirect excitons. It is shown that for indirect excitons, the choice of interaction potential can cause huge differences in the eigenenergies at large electric fields and significant differences even at small electric fields. Furthermore, our calculations show that the choice of material parameters has a significant effect on the binding energies and optical properties of direct and indirect excitons. These calculations contribute to the rapidly growing body of research regarding the excitonic and optical properties of this new class of two dimensional semiconductors.