Quantum fluctuations and lineshape anomaly in a high-$β$ silver-coated InP-based metallic nanolaser

Metallic nanocavity lasers provide important technological advancement towards even smaller integrable light sources. They give access to widely unexplored lasing physics in which the distinction between different operational regimes, like those of thermal or a coherent light emission, becomes increasingly challenging upon approaching a device with a near-perfect spontaneous-emission coupling factor $β$. In fact, quantum-optical studies have to be employed to reveal a transition to coherent emission in the intensity fluctuation behavior of nanolasers when the input-output characteristic appears thresholdless for $β= 1$ nanolasers. Here, we identify a new indicator for lasing operation in high-$β$ lasers by showing that stimulated emission can give rise to a lineshape anomaly manifesting as a transition from a Lorentzian to a Gaussian component in the emission linewidth that dominates the spectrum above the lasing threshold.