Plasmon stimulated emission in arrays of bimetallic structures coated with dye-doped dielectric

We report results on the propagation modes in plasmonic structures incorporating a gain medium using Fourier-plane leakage radiation microscopy. We demonstrate that high contrast images and detailed mode propagation information can be obtained with arrays of dielectric loaded surface plasmon waveguides. Clear interference effects were observed in the Fourier-plane images corresponding to arrays of bimetallic stripes coated with a gain material. This indicates coherent superposition of leaked fluorescence from coupled adjacent waveguides as a result of plasmon stimulated emission.