Cloaking a nanolaser

Abstract: Light emitters are bound to strongly interact with light through enhanced absorption and scattering, which imposes limitations on the design and performance of photonic devices such as solar cells, nanoantennas, and (nano) lasers. Overcoming these limitations forces the use of ineffective nonreciprocity approaches or separation of radiation and scattering in the frequency or time domain. A design that combines the properties of an efficient emitter in one state and the property of being invisible in another state is vital for various applications. In this work, we propose a nanolaser design based on a semiconductor nanoparticle with gain coated by a phase transition material (Sb2S3), switchable between lasing and cloaking (nonscattering) states at the same operating frequency without change in pumping. The operation characteristics of the nanolaser are rigorously investigated. The designed nanolaser can operate with optical or electric pumping and possesses attributes of a thresholdless laser due to the high beta-factor and strong Purcell enhancement in the strongly confined Mie resonance mode. We design a reconfigurable metasurface composed of lasing-cloaking metaatoms that can switch from lasing to a nonscattering state in a reversible manner.