Plasmon-exciton-polariton lasing

Strong coupling of Frenkel excitons with surface plasmons leads to the formation of bosonic quasi-particles known as plasmon-exciton-polaritons (PEPs).Localized surface plasmons in nanoparticles are lossy due to radiative and nonradiative decays, which has hampered the realization of polariton lasing in a plasmonic system, i.e., PEP lasing. These losses can be reduced in collective plasmonic resonances supported by arrays of nanoparticles. Here we demonstrate PEP lasing in arrays of silver nanoparticles by showing the emergence of a threshold in the photoluminescence accompanied by both a superlinear increase of the emission and spectral narrowing. We also observe a reduction of the threshold by increasing the coupling between the molecular excitons and the resonances supported by the array despite the reduction of the quantum efficiency of the emitters. The coexistence of bright and dark collective modes in this plasmonic system allows for a 90?-change of polarization in the emission beyond the threshold