Ortwin Hess
Leverhulme Chair, Imperial College London, UK
Title: Title: Dynamics of plasmonic nanolasing: From strong coupling to stopped-light lasing and surface-plasmon polariton condensation
Biography
Biography: Ortwin Hess
Abstract
Recent progress in nanophotonics and metamaterials physics is now allowing us to ‘look inside the wavelength’ and exploit active nanoplasmonics and metamaterials as a new route to quantum many-body optics on the nanoscale. At the same time, lasers have become smaller and smaller, reaching with the demonstration of plasmonic nanolasing, scales much smaller than the wavelength of the light they emit. Here we discuss recent progress in the study of quantum emitters and quantum gain in nanoplasmonic systems and deliberate on approaches. We combine classical and quantum many-body theory and simulation to describe and model the spatio-temporal dynamics of the optical near field and plasmon polaritons coupled with quantum emitters in nano-plasmonic cavities. We reveal the mechanisms that recently have experimentally allow us to reach the strong coupling regime at room temperature and in ambient conditions. Moreover, it will be demonstrated that applying the nanoplasmonic stopped-light lasing principle to surface- plasmon polaritons (SPP) allows the realization of trapped/condensed non-equilibrium surface-plasmon polaritons at stopped-light singularities, providing an entry point to SPP-condensation.