Gain and plasmon dynamics in active negative-index metamaterials

作者：Sebastian Wuestner, Andreas Pusch, Kosmas L. Tsakmakidis, Joachim M. Hamm, Ortwin Hess · 发表于：Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences · 年份：2011 · DOI：10.1098/rsta.2011.0140 · 被引用次数：76 · 研究领域：Plasmonic and Surface Plasmon Research、Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications、Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics

Photonic metamaterials allow for a range of exciting applications unattainable with ordinary dielectrics. However, the metallic nature of their meta-atoms may result in increased optical losses. Gain-enhanced metamaterials are a potential solution to this problem, but the conception of realistic, three-dimensional designs is a challenging task. Starting from fundamental electrodynamic and quantum mechanical equations, we establish and deploy a rigorous theoretical model for the spatial and temporal interaction of lightwaves with free and bound electrons inside and around metallic (nano-) structures and gain media. The derived numerical framework allows us to self-consistently study the dynamics and impact of the coherent plasmon-gain interaction, nonlinear saturation, field enhancement, radiative damping and spatial dispersion. Using numerical pump-probe experiments on a double-fishnet metamaterial structure with dye molecule inclusions, we investigate the build-up of the inversion profile and the formation of the plasmonic modes in a low-Q cavity. We find that full loss compensation occurs in a regime where the real part of the effective refractive index of the metamaterial becomes more negative compared to the passive case. Our results provide a deep insight into how internal processes affect the overall optical properties of active photonic metamaterials fostering new approaches to the design of practical, loss-compensated plasmonic nanostructures.