Analysis of gain properties in silver-clad nanowire lasers

In the work presented here an exploration has been undertaken of the gain properties of nanowires. Following earlier work the core semiconductor material is assumed to be GaN surrounded by silver metal cladding in air. Silver is effective as a cladding layer because of its very low index of refraction at target lasing wavelengths thereby ensuring that the guided optical mode exhibits minimal penetration into the metal. The operating wavelength of the laser is taken in a range from 330 nm to 830 nm. The modal gain for the lower order TE and TM modes is calculated for thin silver cladding thicknesses from 5 nm to 20 nm using transfer matrix method.