Plasmonic whispering-gallery modes in a semiconductor-insulator-metal hybrid structure

We demonstrate a plasmonic cavity based on a hybrid semiconductor-insulator-metal structure, which can support plasmonic whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) in the insulator layer. The hybrid structure consists of a semiconductor microdisk with embedded gain medium on top of a single-crystalline gold flake with a nanometer-thick dielectric gap in between. By optimizing the dielectric gap thickness, it is possible to form coupled modes consisting of both photonic WGM in the microdisk and plasmonic WGM in the dielectric gap, by which a high field-gain overlap and an efficient cavity feedback can be achieved for investigating strong light-matter interactions and laser applications.