Surface Plasmon Hybridization of Whispering

Gallery Mode Microdisk Laser

Oka Kurniawan, Iftikhar Ahmed, and Li Er Ping
Institute of High Performance Computing, A*STAR
I Fusionopolis Way #16-16 Connexis
Singapore 138632
kurniawano@ihpc.a-star.edu.sg

Abstract-We study the effects of metal layers on the modes of
microdisk lasers. It is found that metal layers hybridize the
whispering gallery modes of microdisks with the surface
plasmon modes. We observe a significant enhancement in the
electric field normal to the metal layers. This hybridization
effect can be utilized to design a surface plasmon source similar
to laser for plasmonic applications.
1I. INTRODUCTION
Many efforts have been done to bring the speed of light
into the current electronic circuitry. Interests in the
integration of photonics and electronic devices have been
taken up by the major industry players. Recently, plasmonic
offers a striking potential of both high speed and
miniaturization of photonics devices [1]. Many works have
been done on the passive components. Unlike these, our
work focuses its attention on the active component which
can be used as the source for a plasmonic circuit.
Plasmonic devices rely on the two basic phenomena. One
is the localized surface plasmon. This phenomenon has been
utilized in SERS (Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering) for
imaging [2]. The other one is the propagating surface
plasmon polariton. In this mode the electromagnetic wave
travels at the boundary between a metal and a dielectric [3].
The electron cloud at the metal is modulated by the electric
field at the boundary and enables a wave to propagate
several micrometers away with a finite momentum ħksp.
It is well known that the surface plasmon mode
momentum (ħksp) is greater than that of the free-space
photon momentum (ħk0) [4]. This means that light from
free-space requires an additional change of momentum to
couple to a surface plasmon polariton mode. Several
techniques have been devised to overcome this. The most
common ones make use of prisms, scatterings, and gratings.
It is obviously beneficial if one can design a surface plasmon
source that couples directly to plasmonic waveguides.
Few works have been done on the surface plasmon source.
Bergman and Stockman showed theoretically that a
stimulated amplification of plasmon mode similar to laser
can be achieved [5, 6]. They calculated the gain of the
stimulated emission when a V-shape metal structure is
embedded inside an active dielectric matrix. Few years
later, Koller at el. successfully demonstrated a surface
plasmon source based on organic light emitting diodes [7].
The light emitting diode is attached on top of a metal layer
where surface plasmon polariton wave can propagate. A
year later, Walters et al. proposed a silicon-based electrical
source for surface plasmon polariton [8]. The electric field
between the metals excites electrons which in turn excite the
surface plasmon. In this work, we study the effects of metal
layers when attached to microdisk lasers. The cavity
structure of a microdisk promises higher field intensity
through its confinement.
It will be shown that the metal layers hybridize the
whispering gallery mode of microdisk lasers with the surface
plasmon mode. The electric field normal to the metal layers
is enhanced significantly and become the dominant
component.
2II. THEORETICAL MODELS
The structure that we study is shown in Fig. 1. The dark
regions indicate the metal layers while the bright one
indicates dielectric or semiconductor. The microdisk laser is
sandwiched between two metal layers on the top and the
bottom. The microdisk is made of a III-V Semiconductor
material which has a bandgap at 1.55 µm and a refractive
index of 3.5. The metal layers are gold (Au).
Fig. 1. Microdisk laser sandwiched between two metal layers on top and
bottom. We are studying the effect of the metal layers on the whispering
gallery mode of the microdisk laser.
The structure shown in Fig. 1 is studied using a full three
dimensional dynamic thermal electron quantum medium
finite difference time domain (DTEQM-FDTD) [9]. This
code has been previously used to study the light extraction
from elliptical microdisk laser and the effect of external
magnetic field on such extraction [9, 10]. A three
dimensional simulation domain is required to take into
account the thickness of the microdisk laser. The DTEQM-
FDTD takes into account the electron dynamics based on
multi-level multi-electron quantum system which is
governed by Pauli Exclusion Principle, state filling, and
dynamical Fermi-Dirac Thermalization [11]. In this way, we
are able to treat various solid-state or atomic media.
Previous studies consider the medium only as a dielectric
and did not take into account the electron dynamics which
are considered in this work.
Fig. 2. (left) Electron dynamics in 4-level model. (right) Multi-level multi-
electron model semiconductor material in DTEQM-FDTD.
The left figure in Fig. 2. shows the 4-level 2-electron
model where an electron is excited above the bandgap
energy. This electron then undergoes intraband decay to the
band edge through phonon, and finally recombines with the
hole in the valence band. This recombination excites a
photon with energy equal to the energy difference between
the conduction and the valence band. To model the
semiconductor medium more accurately, we use additional
energy levels and electron dynamics. In this multi-level
multi-electron model, the conduction and valence bands are
divided into several groups which can be represented by a
single dipole. In this work, five groups of energy level are
used in each conduction and valence bands, and the energy
width for each group is Δλ = 25 nm. In the simulation, the
microdisk is electrically injected at a rate of 3×109 s-1. The
temperature is set to room temperature at 300 K.
To model the electromagnetic wave, we solve the
Maxwell’s equation using the finite difference time domain
(FDTD) method. The difference with a conventional FDTD
method is that we include the effect of the electron dynamics
into the gain medium as mentioned in the previous
paragraph. This is done by adding a macroscopic
polarization density for the gain medium. Hence, our
Maxwell equations can be written as
dH (r, t ) 1 given by ψ = JM(x)eiMθ, where JM are Bessel functions of the
= − ∇ × E (r , t ) (1)
dt µ0
dE(r, t ) 1 1 dP (r, t )
= ∇ × H (r , t ) − (2)
dt ε0 n 2
ε 0 n 2 dt
where E and H are the electric field and the magnetic field
respectively, and ε0 and μ0 are the free-space permittivity and
permeability. The refractive index n in the above equation is
the effective refractive index value of the medium. The
microscopic polarization density P is derived from the dipole
transition of electrons taking into account the state filling
and Pauli Exclusion Principle.
The second region that needs to be modeled is the metallic
structures. For this region, we incorporate the Lorentz-
Drude dispersive model. We use one Drude term and one
Lorentz pole as follows:
ωD2 ∆εΩ2L
ε LD (ω) = ε ∞ − − 2 (3)
ω(ω + iγ D ) (ω − Ω2L ) + iΓL ω
The gold (Au) parameters used in the calculation follows
that of Reference [12], i.e. ε∞ = 5.9573, ωD/2π = 2113.6 THz,
γD/2π = 15.92 THz, ΩL/2π = 650.07 THz, ΓL/2π = 104.86
THz, and Δε = 1.09.
III. RESULTS
We first study the conventional microdisk laser without
any metal layers. The microdisk has a 1 µm radius and 120
nm thickness. The total electric field distribution is plotted
in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3. Total electric field distribution of conventional microdisk laser. We
observe the whispering gallery mode traveling at the near boundary of the
disk with M=8.
The plot shows a whispering gallery mode traveling inside
the microdisk as predicted. The whispering gallery mode
solution can be obtained by solving the Helmholtz equation
of a dielectric disk. The solution of the wave function is
first kind, and x = neff(ω)r/c is the root of the Bessel
functions [13]. Putting in M=8 gives us a resonance
wavelength at around 1.7 µm. This, however, assumes that
the wave function is terminated at the radial boundary of the
microdisk. It does not take into account the bending loss in
the microdisk.
Our FDTD simulation gave a resonance wavelength at
around 1.47 µm (Fig. 4). The simulation takes into account
the bending loss due to refractive index difference at the
radial boundary. A similar wavelength has been reported
previously in [10].
Fig. 4 also shows a second peak at 1.37 µm. At the initial
state, we observe the mode at 1.37 µm dominates. Our
simulation model allows us to see the evolution of the
electric field distribution over time. Hence, we were able to
observe that several modes were competing, and how the
mode at 1.47 µm overcame the mode at 1.37 µm after some
time. The steady state dominant mode is at wavelength 1.47
µm as shown in the plot.
Fig. 4. Dominant electric field intensity of conventional microdisk. The
dominant mode is at 1.47µm, while the second mode is at 1.37 µm.
Fig. 5. Total electric field of plasmonic microdisk laser. The whispering
gallery mode is hybridized by the surface plasmon mode.
When the metal layers are attached at the top and bottom
of the microdisk lasers, the total electric field distribution is
shown in Fig. 5. Both the fields at the inside and outside of
the microdisk are affected. More modes can be observed in
the plasmonic microdisk laser than the conventional
microdisk laser. Observation of the field distribution over
time shows that the whispering gallery mode can still be
found. However, this mode is now mixed with the surface
plasmon modes. Hence we observe there is a mixture of
wave circling the microdisk as well as wave traveling back
and forth in the radial direction. This wave that is traveling
back and forth in the radial direction evolves to be the
dominant field as it can be seen in the field distribution
outside the microdisk which is now propagating in the radial
direction.
In the conventional microdisk laser shown in Fig. 3, the
mode can be considered to be almost TE (transverse
electric). This means that the dominant electric field is
transverse to the direction of propagation. Our calculation
indicates that the dominant electric field for the conventional
microdisk points in the radial direction. In fact the normal
component, which is the z direction, is very small.
This mode observation agrees with the results by Perhaia
et al. in [14]. They studied the mode when a single metal
layer is attached to a microdisk laser. As they varied the
radius of the metal layer, they found an increasing
hybridization of the whispering gallery mode with the
surface plasmon mode. In our case, the surface plasmon
polariton at the top interface is coupled with the bottom
interface and creates a stronger field enhancement.
The fast fourier transform of the electric field when the
metals are attached to the microdisk laser is shown in Fig. 6.
In this figure, we only plot the normal component of field,
which is the z direction.
When metal layers are attached to the microdisk lasers, the
normal component of the electric field is enhanced
significantly. It is observed that the enhancement at
wavelength 1.47 µm is about 20,000 times. This significant
enhancement in the normal direction changes the dominant
field from the radial direction to the normal direction. The
electric field normal to the metal layers shows the
characteristic of surface plasmon polariton mode.
Fig. 6, Enhancement of electric field in the normal direction due to the
metal layers.

When one solves the Maxwell equation for a metal-
dielectric-metal medium, one will obtain a TM (transverse
magnetic) mode propagating at the surface. For example,
when the mode propagates in the x direction, the non-zero
field components are Ex, Ez, and Hy. Consider, then, the case
when the wave is traveling at the bottom but inside the disk
of Fig. 3. The propagation direction is in the x direction and
the wave is moving to the right in anti-clock wise fashion.
The dominant electric field was found in the negative y
direction, or in other words, in the radial direction. But
when the metal layers are attached to the microdisk, the
dominant electric field now changes to the z direction, which
is normal to the plane in Figs. 3 and 5.
Fig. 6 also shows us that the metal layers create more
modes as shown in the increasing number of peaks. In the
conventional microdisk we only find one dominant mode at
1.47 µm and a secondary mode at 1.37 µm. However, the
plasmonic microdisk shows another dominant peak at the
wavelength near 1.47 µm, and a smaller peak at wavelength
1.42 µm. The plasmonic microdisk, then, must be designed
well in order to have a single mode output. This will be a
challenging yet interesting work which we will pursue in the
future.
Electronics, vol. 46, pp. 128-136, 2010.
[10] E. H. Khoo, I. Ahmed, E.P. Li, “Enhancement of Light Energy
Extraction from Elliptical Microcavity using External Magnetic
Field for Switching Applications,” Applied Physics Letters, vol. 95,
pp. 121104, 2009.
[11] Y. Huang, S. Ho, “Computational Model of Solid-State, Molecular,
or Atomic Media for FDTD Simulation Based on a Multi-Level
Multi-Electron System Governed by Pauli Exclusion and Fermi-
Dirac Thermalization with Application to Semiconductor
Photonics,” Optics Express, vol. 14, pp. 3569-3587, 2006.
[12] A. Vial and T. Laroche, “Comparison of Gold and Silver Dispersion
Laws Suitable for FDTD Simulations,” Applied Physics B, vol. 93,
pp. 139-143, 2008.
[13] R. E. Slusher, A. F. Levi, U. Mohideen, et al., “Threshold
Characteristics of Semiconductor Microdisk Lasers,” Applied
Physics Letters, vol. 63, pp. 1310, 1993.
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plasmon Mode Hybridization in Subwavelength Microdisk Lasers,”
Applied Physics Letters, vol. 95, pp. 201114, 2009.

IV. CONCLUSION
We have studied the plasmonic effects of microdisk lasers
when two metal layers are attached. It has been shown that
the whispering gallery mode is hybridized with the surface
plasmon mode. The dominant electric field changes from
pointing in the radial direction to the normal of the planes.
This change can be utilized to extract the surface plasmon
mode into a metal-insulator metal waveguide which has a
similar plasmonic mode.

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