Berlin 2005 – scientific programme

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O: Oberflächenphysik

O 36: Postersitzung (Elektronische Struktur, Grenzfl
äche fest-flüssig, Halbleiteroberfl
ächen und -grenzfl
ächen, Nanostrukturen, Oberfl
ächenreaktionen, Teilchen und Cluster, Struktur und Dynamik reiner Oberfl
ächen)

O 36.37: Poster

Monday, March 7, 2005, 15:00–18:00, Poster TU F

Stimulated emission of surface plasmons at the interface between a silver film and an optically pumped dye solution — •Jan Seidel, Stefan Grafström, and Lukas Eng — Institut für Angewandte Photophysik, TU Dresden, George-Bähr-Str. 1, 01069 Dresden

Surface plasmons (SPs) are surface-bound electromagnetic waves supported by metals, offering the possibility of strong spatial confinement of electromagnetic fields on the micro- and nanoscale. They suffer, however, from strong damping caused by internal absorption and radiation losses. Here we demonstrate amplification of SPs by stimulated emission, which marks a possible solution to this problem. We use an attenuated-total-reflection setup to detect stimulated emission of SPs at the interface between a silver film and an optically pumped dye solution acting as the amplifying medium. Clear evidence of stimulated emission is provided by an excellent agreement of the experimental observations with a theoretical analysis. Amplification of SPs can be considered analogous to photon amplification in a laser, thereby suggesting novel approaches in the field of nanooptics.