Plasmonic Effect of a Nanoshell Dimer with Different Gain Materials

Though the plasmonic property for a passive nanoparticle dimer has been studied widely, the performance of a nanoparticle dimer with gain material is still inexplicit to our knowledge. Therefore, in this paper, we focus on the plasmonic effect of a nanoshell dimer, with its core filled with different gain materials, under a polarized plane wave excitation using a three-dimensional finite difference time domain method. It is shown that the gain materials in the core of the nanoshell can compensate the intrinsic absorption of the metal shell, resulting in a local energy enhancement in the junction of the active nanoshell dimer. The physics is supported by the detailed energy distribution of the active nanoshell dimer in each geometry region. It is found that the plasmonic coupling between two active nanoshell particles is more compact than the case of passive ones. The influence of shell thickness on the interaction between two adjacent active nanoshells is also analyzed.