Title: “Nanolasers based on resonant dark states”
Speaker: Aditya Jain, ECpE Graduate Student
Advisor: Costas M. Soukoulis
Abstract: Recently, miniaturized laser systems or Nanolasers have been shown to exhibit Ultrafast modulation speeds and small on-chip footprint. So far, majority of the approaches led to the utilization of diverse materials and techniques for reaching the desired laser oscillation at small scales. Unfortunately, at some point all approaches encounter a trade-off between the system dimensions and the Q factor, especially when going subwavelength. Here, we propose a metamaterial laser system that overcomes this trade-off and offers radiation damping tunability, along with many other features, such as directionality, subwavelength integration and simple layer-by-layer fabrication. The principle of operation is based on the excitation of a dark mode, i.e. a mode that does not radiate. Then, with the aid of a small non-resonant scatterer, the dark mode can be coupled to freespace at will.