Nanofocusing of optical energy in tapered plasmonic waveguides.
نویسنده
چکیده
We predict theoretically that surface plasmon polaritons propagating toward the tip of a tapered plasmonic waveguide are slowed down and asymptotically stopped when they tend to the tip, never actually reaching it (the travel time to the tip is logarithmically divergent). This phenomenon causes accumulation of energy and giant local fields at the tip. There are various prospective applications in nano-optics and nanotechnology.
منابع مشابه
Optimal tapers for compensating losses in plasmonic waveguides
1 Introduction The study of the field enhancement and subwavelength focusing of light in optical waveguides is of great interest for many applications including sensing, lasing, and imaging. The light confinement in conventional optical waveguides is limited by diffraction and by that dielectric waveguides do not allow the effective field fo-cusing to dimensions less than a micron. In contrast,...
متن کاملNonlinear nanofocusing in tapered plasmonic waveguides.
We suggest using tapered waveguides for compensating losses of surface plasmon-polaritons in order to enhance nonlinear effects at the nanoscale. We study nonlinear plasmon self-focusing in tapered metal-dielectric-metal slot waveguides and demonstrate that, by an appropriate choice of the taper angle, we can effectively suppress the mode attenuation achieving stable propagation of a spatial pl...
متن کاملNanofocusing in laterally tapered plasmonic waveguides.
We investigate the focusing of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) excited with 1.5 microm light in a tapered Au waveguide on a planar dielectric substrate by experiments and simulations. We find that nanofocusing can be obtained when the asymmetric bound mode at the substrate side of the metal film is excited. The propagation and concentration of this mode to the tip is demonstrated. No sign of ...
متن کاملThree-dimensional nanofocusing of light through surface plasmon scattering by a lump-like defect in metal/dielectric/metal slot waveguides
We show that scattering of a surface plasmon by lump-like defects on the walls of a metal/dielectric/metal slot waveguide may be accompanied by 3D nanofocusing of light. Such nanofocusing results in the emergence of “hot spots” of nanometer size with a field intensity several orders higher than in the incident plasmon. This effect takes place only if the lump size is smaller than some critical ...
متن کاملNonlinear couplers with tapered plasmonic waveguides.
We suggest and demonstrate numerically that, by employing tapered waveguides in the geometry of a directional coupler, we can enhance dramatically the performance for optical switching of nonlinear plasmonic couplers operating at the nanoscale, overcoming the detrimental losses but preserving the subwavelength confinement. We demonstrate that, by an appropriate choice of the taper angle of the ...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
عنوان ژورنال:
- Physical review letters
دوره 93 13 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2004