Plasmon Injection to Compensate and Control Losses in Negative Index Metamaterials

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel plasmon injection scheme that coherently amplifies optical signals to compensate for inherent losses in metamaterials, enabling loss-free operation without traditional gain media.

Contribution

The proposed plasmon injection scheme is a fundamentally different, gain-medium-free method to mitigate losses in metamaterials, applicable across various optical frequencies.

Findings

Demonstrated loss compensation in metamaterials using the PI scheme

The scheme operates under normal incidence and can be generalized

Potential for loss-free, scalable metamaterials in the visible spectrum

Abstract

Metamaterials have introduced a whole new world of unusual materials with functionalities that cannot be attained in naturally occurring material systems by mimicking and controlling the natural phenomena at subwavelength scales. However, the inherent absorption losses pose fundamental challenge to the most fascinating applications of metamaterials. Based on a novel plasmon injection (PI or \Pi) scheme, we propose a coherent optical amplification technique to compensate losses in metamaterials. Although the proof of concept device here operates under normal incidence only, our proposed scheme can be generalized to arbitrary form of incident waves. The \Pi-scheme is fundamentally different than major optical amplification schemes. It does not require gain medium, interaction with phonons, or any nonlinear medium. The \Pi-scheme allows for loss-free metamaterials. It is ideally suited for mitigating losses in metamaterials operating in the visible spectrum and is scalable to other optical frequencies. These findings open the possibility of reviving the early dreams of making 'magical' metamaterials from scratch.