Breakthroughs in Photonics 2014: Advances in Plasmonic Nanolasers

Plasmonic nanolasers are promising as nanoscale coherent sources of optical fields because they support ultrasmall sizes and show ultrafast dynamics. Major advances over the last several years have focused on nanocavity design, materials improvements in quality of both the plasmonic materials and gain media, and room-temperature operation. In 2014, the most significant results focused on tunable nanolasing emission and strategies to time-resolve the dynamics.