Prof. Jacob B. Khurgin
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Johns Hopkins University

Low Loss Plasmonics: How to get there
Metals, which dominate the fields of plasmonics and metamaterials suffer from large ohmic losses. New plasmonic materials, such as doped semiconductors or materials with strong phonon resonance have smaller material loss, and using them in place of metals carries a promise of reduced-loss plasmonic and metamaterial structures, with sharper resonances and higher field concentration. This promise is put to a rigorous analytical test in this work and it is revealed that having low material loss is not sufficient to have a reduced modal loss in plasmonic structures, unless the plasma frequency is significantly higher than the operational frequency. Using examples of nanoparticle plasmons and gap plasmons one comes to the conclusion that even in the mid-infrared spectrum metals continue to hold advantage over the alternative media.  And yet, the new materials may still find application niche where the high absorption loss is beneficial rather than detrimental while cost and thermal stability are important factors. Such applications may be in medicine and thermal photovoltaics.

Jacob B. Khurgin is a theorist, but through his 30+ years career he has been working with many experimental groups in diverse areas of electronics, optics, condensed matter physics and telecommunications. Currently, his interests include mid-infrared technology – lasers and detectors, wide bandgap semiconductor devices, laser refrigeration of solids, plasmonics, photo catalysis, band-width efficient optical communications, and others. Professor Khurgin graduated from NYU in 1986, worked in industry, and joined JHU in 1988. He has authored 300 journal publications, 1 book, holds 30 patents and is a Fellow of American Physical Society and Optical Society of America.