Ten years ago, three teams experimentally demonstrated the first spasers, or plasmonic nanolasers, after the spaser concept was first proposed theoretically in 2003. An overview of the significant progress achieved over the last 10 years is presented here, together with the original context of and motivations for this research. After a general introduction, we first summarize the fundamental properties of spasers and discuss the major motivations that led to the first demonstrations of spasers and nanolasers. This is followed by an overview of crucial technological progress, including lasing threshold reduction, dynamic modulation, room-temperature operation, electrical injection, the control and improvement of spasers, the array operation of spasers, and selected applications of single-particle spasers. Research prospects are presented in relation to several directions of development, including further miniaturization, the relationship with Bose–Einstein condensation, novel spaser-based interconnects, and other features of spasers and plasmonic lasers that have yet to be realized or challenges that are still to be overcome.

十年前，在2003年理论上首次提出了spaser概念之后，三个团队通过实验演示了第一个spasers或等离子纳米激光。这里概述了过去10年中取得的重大进展，以及以下内容的原始背景：这项研究的动机。简要介绍之后，我们首先总结了Spasers的基本特性，并讨论了导致Spasers和NanoLaser首次演示的主要动机。接下来是对关键技术进展的概述，包括降低激光阈值，动态调制，室温操作，电注入，对梁的控制和改进，梁的阵列操作以及单粒子梁的选定应用。