Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Zia, Rashid
• Selker, Mark D
• Catrysse, Peter B
• Brongersma, Mark L

Titel

Geometries and materials for subwavelength surface plasmon modes

Ist Teil von

• Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision, 2004-12, Vol.21 (12), p.2442

Ort / Verlag

United States

Erscheinungsjahr

2004

Link zum Volltext

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Plasmonic waveguides can guide light along metal-dielectric interfaces with propagating wave vectors of greater magnitude than are available in free space and hence with propagating wavelengths shorter than those in vacuum. This is a necessary, rather than sufficient, condition for subwavelength confinement of the optical mode. By use of the reflection pole method, the two-dimensional modal solutions for single planar waveguides as well as adjacent waveguide systems are solved. We demonstrate that, to achieve subwavelength pitches, a metal-insulator-metal geometry is required with higher confinement factors and smaller spatial extent than conventional insulator-metal-insulator structures. The resulting trade-off between propagation and confinement for surface plasmons is discussed, and optimization by materials selection is described.