摘要
A history and a glimpse into the future of spaser(acronym for"surface plasmon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation")is provided.The spaser(also called a plasmonic nanolaser)is an active nanosystem including a gain medium and a nanoplasmonic metal core.It generates coherent intense nanolocalized fields.Theoretically predicted in 2003 by Bergman and Stockman,the spaser grew into a large fundamental research and application field with thousands of publications.We review a few of them to illustrate the most important and general fundamental properties of the spaser.We also review some selected applications of spasers,in particular,to ultrasensing and biomedical problems,concentrating on cancer-cell theranostics(therapeutics and diagnostics).In conclusion,we attempt to glimpse into the future by predicting that the next big development of the spasers will be topological nano-optics,and its"killer"application will be ultrafast,high-density on-chip communications for future information processing.
