Plasmonic lattices of metal nanoparticles have emerged as an effective platform for strong light–matter coupling, lasing, and Bose–Einstein condensation. However, the full potential of complex unit cell structures has not been exploited. On the other hand, bound states in continuum (BICs) have attracted attention, as they provide topologically protected optical modes with diverging quality factors. Here, we show that quadrumer nanoparticle lattices enable lasing in a quasi-BIC mode with a highly out-of-plane character. By combining theory with polarization-resolved measurements of the emission, we show that the lasing mode has a topological charge. Our analysis reveals that the mode is primarily polarized out-of-plane as a result of the quadrumer structure. The quality factors of the out-of-plane BIC modes of the quadrumer array can be exceedingly high. Our results unveil the power of complex multiparticle unit cells in creating topologically protected high- Q modes in periodic nanostructures.

Plasmonic structures interacting with light provide electromagnetic resonances which result in a high degree of local field confinement enabling the enhancement of light-matter interaction. Plasmonic structures typically consist of metals which, however, suffer from very high ohmic losses and heating. High-index dielectrics, on the other hand, can serve as an alternative material due to their low-dissipative nature and strong scattering abilities. We study the optical properties of a system composed of all-dielectric nanoparticle arrays covered with a film of organic dye molecules (IR-792), and compare these dielectric arrays with metallic nanoparticle arrays. We tune the light-matter interaction by changing the concentration in the dye film and report the system to be in the strong coupling regime. We observe a Rabi splitting between the surface lattice resonances (SLRs) of the nanoparticle arrays and the absorption line of the dye molecules of up to 253 meV and 293 meV, for the dielectric and metallic nanoparticles, respectively. The Rabi splitting depends linearly on the square root of the dye molecule concentration , and we further assess how the Rabi splitting depends on the film thickness for a low dye molecule concentration. For thinner films of thicknesses up to 260 nm, we observe no visible Rabi splitting. However, a Rabi splitting evolves at thicknesses from 540 nm to 990 nm. We perform finite-difference time-domain simulations to analyze the near-field enhancements for the dielectric and metallic nanoparticle arrays. The electric fields are enhanced by a factor of 1200 and 400, close to the particles for gold and amorphous silicon, respectively, and the modes extend over half a micron around the particles for both materials.

We experimentally observe lasing in a hexamer plasmonic lattice and find that, when tuning the scale of the unit cell, the polarization properties of the emission change. By a theoretical analysis, we identify the lasing modes as quasi-bound-states in continuum of topological charges of zero, one, or two. A T-matrix simulation of the structure reveals that the mode quality (Q) factors depend on the scale of the unit cell, with highest-Q modes favored by lasing. The system thus shows a loss-driven transition between lasing in modes of trivial and high-order topological charge.