Ultrafast photoluminescence and multiscale light amplification in nanoplasmonic cavity glass.

Interactions between plasmons and exciton nanoemitters in plexcitonic systems lead to fast and intense luminescence, desirable in optoelectonic devices, ultrafast optical switches and quantum information science. While luminescence enhancement through exciton-plasmon coupling has thus far been mostly demonstrated in micro- and nanoscale structures, analogous demonstrations in bulk materials have been largely neglected. Here we present a bulk nanocomposite glass doped with cadmium telluride quantum dots (CdTe QDs) and silver nanoparticles, nAg, which act as exciton and plasmon sources, respectively.

Optically-active metastable defects in volumetric nanoplasmonic composites.

Metastable defects in semiconductor materials have been well known for decades, but have only recently started to attract attention for their potential applications in information technology. Here, we describe active and passive nanoplasmonic materials with optically active metastable defects that can be switched on or off by cooling with or without laser illumination, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of metastable defects in either passive or active nanoplasmonic materials, and, more generally, in non-semiconducting materials.

Compendium of natural hyperbolic materials.

Artificially structured hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs) - uniaxial materials with opposite signs of permittivity for ordinary and extraordinary waves - are one of the most attractive classes of metamaterials. Their existing in nature counterpart natural (homogeneous) hyperbolic materials (NHMs) has several advantages but has not yet been analyzed extensively. Here, based on literature-available data on permittivity as a function of wavelength, we review materials with naturally occurring anisotropy of permittivity in specific wavelength ranges.