Plasmonic loss compensation in nanowires embedded in rhodamine doped PMMA waveguides

In this work, silver nanowires are embedded in a polymer waveguide doped with Rhodamine 6 G. The waveguides are constructed around selected isolated nanowires using electron beam lithography. A probe laser is focused at one end of the waveguide that launches surface plasmons polaritons in the silver nanowire. An additional low-powered 5 W/cm 2 pump laser is focused on top of the nanowire to pump the Rhodamine. A 75 cm - 1 gain is measured in the polymer waveguide. The plasmon scattered at the other end of the nanowire is imaged with a CCD camera and an amplified photodetector. Comparing images with and without pumping shows an increase in the intensity of the scattered plasmon. The photodetector signal from the end of the nanowire is passed through a lock-in amplifier and gives an average increase of 3.2% with pumping. This shows a partial compensation of the losses in plasmon propagation and increases in their propagation length.