Confinement and propagation characteristics of subwavelength plasmonic modes

Oulton, R F and Bartal, G and Pile, D F P and Zhang, X. (2008) Confinement and propagation characteristics of subwavelength plasmonic modes. New Journal of Physics, 10 (10). p. 105018. ISSN 1367-2630

Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)

Abstract

We have studied subwavelength confinement of the surface plasmon polariton modes of various plasmonic waveguides and examined their relative merits using a graphical parametric representation of their confinement and propagation characteristics. While the same plasmonic phenomenon governs mode confinement in all these waveguides, the various architectures can exhibit distinctive behavior in terms of effective mode area and propagation distance. We found that the waveguides based on metal and one dielectric material show a similar trade-off between energy confinement and propagation distance. However, a hybrid plasmon waveguide, incorporating metal, low index and high index dielectric materials, exhibits longer propagation distances for the same degree of confinement. We also point out that plasmonic waveguides with sharp features can provide an extremely strong local field enhancement, which is not necessarily accompanied by strong confinement of the total electromagnetic energy. In these waveguides, a mode may couple strongly to nearby atoms, but suffer relatively low propagation losses due to weak confinement.

Item Type: Article
InterNano Taxonomy: Nanoscale Objects and Nanostructured Materials > Nanocomposites > Thin films
Nanoscale Objects and Nanostructured Materials > Nanocomposites > Optical
Collections: Nanomanufacturing Research Collection > Nanomanufacturing Nanoscale Science and Engineering Centers > Center for Scalable and Integrated Nanomanufacturing
Depositing User: Moureen Kemei
Date Deposited: 14 Apr 2010 20:30
Last Modified: 26 Sep 2014 21:36
URI: http://eprints.internano.org/id/eprint/432

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item