Nanowire based hybrid plasmonic structures for low-threshold lasing at the subwavelength scale

Novel plasmonic nanolaser structures are proposed by leveraging the efficient guiding properties of hybrid plasmonic modes of nanowire based waveguides. Theoretical investigations reveal that the coupling between the metal nanowire and the high-index dielectric nanostructure with optical gain results in strong field enhancement in the low-index gap region, sufficient modal overlap with the gain medium and low propagation loss, which could enable lasing at the subwavelength scale with low pump threshold. The proposed nanowire-based plasmonic nanolasers are also compatible with standard fabrication technology and could be appealing candidates for active photonic systems.