Paul, AniruddhaZhen, Yu-RongWang, YiChang, Wei-ShunXia, YounanNordlander, PeterLink, Stephan2014-07-142014-07-142014Paul, Aniruddha, Zhen, Yu-Rong, Wang, Yi, et al.. "Dye-Assisted Gain of Strongly Confined Surface Plasmon Polaritons in Silver Nanowires." <i>Nano Letters,</i> 14, no. 6 (2014) American Chemical Society: 3628-3633. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nl501363s.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/76174Subwavelength confinement and active control of light is essential for nanoscale communication devices at visible frequencies that support large bandwidths.[1-5] Noble-metal nanostructures present an excellent platform for strongly confined optical waveguides [6-13] because of their ability to support surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs).[14] However, SPP propagation suffers from losses that seriously limit their application potential. [9] Although significant progress toward SPP loss compensation has been reported for various planar 2D waveguide structures,[15-20] as well as lasing involving strongly localized plasmon modes,[21,22] SPP gain in 1D nanoscale waveguides at visible frequencies is yet to be accomplished. Here, we report the first demonstration of gain for deep subwavelength confined SPPs (mode area = λ2/40) in chemically prepared silver nanowires (Ag NWs). We measured a gain coefficient of 270 cm-1 resulting in 14% loss compensation using a continuous-wave (cw) pump laser. These results are an important step toward total loss compensation for highly confined nanowire SPPs.engThis is an author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by the American Chemical Society.Journal articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nl501363s