Plasmonic Whispering Gallery Microcavity Paves Way to Future Nanolasers.

(From AScribe)

BERKELEY, Calif. -- The principle behind whispering galleries - where words spoken softly beneath a domed ceiling or in a vault can be clearly heard on the opposite side of the chamber - has been used to achieve what could prove to be a significant breakthrough in the miniaturization of lasers. Ultrasmall lasers, i.e., nanoscale, promise a wide variety of intriguing applications, including superfast communications and data handling (photonics), and optical microchips for instant and detailed chemical analyses.

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the California Institute of Technology have developed a "whispering gallery microcavity" based on plasmons - electromagnetic waves that race across the surfaces of metals. Such a plasmon wave has very small wavelength compared with the light, enabling the scaling down optical devices beyond diffraction limit of the light. Cavities are the confined spaces in lasers where light amplification takes place and this new micro-sized …