Metal Cavities as the Efficiency Killer in Nanolasers and Spontaneous Light Sources

The metal influence on light emitters has been studied for more than twenty years in semiconductor light emitters. A critical feature is reliance on the correct electromagnetic boundary conditions to understand and predict the performance of either lasers or spontaneous light emitters for which the metal may influence the emission properties. Here we show that nearly (all) recent studies of metal-coupled lasers or spontaneous light emitters leave out near-field interactions that seriously degrade the emission efficiency.