Investigation of non-reciprocal magneto-plasmonic waveguides for compact integrated optical isolators on silicon

Introduction Creating compact on-chip non-reciprocal components is of fundamental interest in integrated optics at telecom wavelength of 1.55 μm. Today a lot of integrated functions are available commercially such as lasers, couplers, filters, modulators, but there is a lack of non-reciprocal integrated functions like optical isolators and circulators. Commercial optical isolators are expensive bulk components operating in the Faraday configuration (with a longitudinal external magnetic field) not suited for integration. They are based on garnet magneto-optical material which has very low absorption at telecom wavelength.