Accumulation and directionality of large spontaneous emission enabled by epsilon-near-zero film

We demonstrate the spectral accumulation of large spontaneous emission (SE) for nanocavities with different sizes in the coupled Ag nanorod and epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) film system. This effect originates from the slowing down of the spectral shift of resonant nanocavities at the wavelength where the permittivity of the substrate vanishes, i.e., the resonance "pinning" near the ENZ frequency. In addition, most far field radiation of the emitter is concentrated in the forward field with small solid angle due to the impedance mismatch between the ENZ film and the free space. This kind of size-relaxed nanocavity for directional SE has potential applications in the bright single photon sources, plasmon-based nanolasers, and on-chip nanodevices.