Nanomechanical Plasmonic Switch Based on Multimode Interference

We propose and investigate a 2 × 2 optical switch based on multimode interference in Au-Air-Au gap plasmonic waveguide. The propagation of surface plasmon wave in gap plasmonic waveguide could be tuned by changing the size of air gap through a nanomechanical actuator. By tailoring the dispersion of...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE photonics technology letters Vol. 28; no. 23; pp. 2661 - 2664
Main Authors Gao, Yixiao, Ren, Guobin, Zhu, Bofeng, Liu, Huaiqing, Jian, Shuisheng
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York IEEE 01.12.2016
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects
Actuators
Air gaps
Extinction ratio
Interference
nanomechanical devices
Nanostructure
Optical switches
Optical waveguides
plasmonic switch
Plasmonics
Plasmons
Ports
Surface plasmons
Switching
Wave propagation
Waveguide discontinuities
Waveguides
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:We propose and investigate a 2 × 2 optical switch based on multimode interference in Au-Air-Au gap plasmonic waveguide. The propagation of surface plasmon wave in gap plasmonic waveguide could be tuned by changing the size of air gap through a nanomechanical actuator. By tailoring the dispersion of the gap plasmonic waveguide, the multimode region only supports two lowest order modes with the opposite field symmetry. Switching between two states of gap size in the multimode region, the phase difference of two modes at output port could be tuned from 0 to π leading to switching plasmonic wave energy between two output ports. The proposed structure is simple in design and compact in size, which may find promising applications in active plasmonic devices.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:1041-1135
1941-0174
DOI:10.1109/LPT.2016.2615056