Biased Nanoscale Contact as Active Element for Electrically Driven Plasmonic Nanoantenna

Electrically driven optical antennas can serve as compact sources of electromagnetic radiation operating at optical frequencies. In the most widely explored configurations, the radiation is generated by electrons tunneling between metallic parts of the structure when a bias voltage is applied across the tunneling gap. Rather than relying on an inherently inefficient inelastic light emission in the gap, we suggest to use a ballistic nanoconstriction as the feed element of an optical antenna supporting plasmonic modes. We discuss the underlying mechanisms responsible for the optical emission and show that, with such a nanoscale contact, one can reach quantum efficiency orders of magnitude larger than with standard light-emitting tunneling structures.