Nanolaser arrays: toward application-driven dense integration

The past two decades have seen widespread efforts being directed toward the development of nanoscale lasers. A plethora of studies on single such emitters have helped demonstrate their advantageous characteristics such as ultrasmall footprints, low power consumption, and room-temperature operation. Leveraging knowledge about single nanolasers, the next phase of nanolaser technology will be geared toward scaling up design to form arrays for important applications. In this review, we discuss recent progress on the development of such array architectures of nanolasers. We focus on valuable attributes and phenomena realized due to unique array designs that may help enable real-world, practical applications. Arrays consisting of exactly two nanolasers are first introduced since they can serve as a building block toward comprehending the behavior of larger lattices. These larger-sized lattices can be distinguished depending on whether or not their constituent elements are coupled to one another in some form. While uncoupled arrays are suitable for applications such as imaging, biosensing, and even cryptography, coupling in arrays allows control over many aspects of the emission behavior such as beam directionality, mode switching, and orbital angular momentum. We conclude by discussing some important future directions involving nanolaser arrays.