Efficient unidirectional polarization-controlled excitation of surface plasmon polaritons

By A. Pors, M. Nielsen, T. Bernardin, J. Weeber, Sergey I. Bozhevolnyi. Light: Science & Applications, 2014

228 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Efficient excitation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) remains one of the most challenging issues in areas of plasmonics related to information communication technologies. In particular, combining high SPP excitation efficiency and acceptance of any polarization of incident light appeared to be impossible to attain due to the polarized nature of SPPs. Here we demonstrate plasmonic couplers that represent arrays of gap SPP resonators producing upon reflection two orthogonal phase gradients in respective linear polarizations of incident radiation. These couplers are thereby capable of efficiently converting incident radiation with arbitrary polarization into SPPs that propagate in orthogonal directions dictated by the phase gradients. Fabricated couplers operate at telecom wavelengths and feature the coupling efficiency of ∼25% for either of two linear polarizations of incident radiation and directivity of SPP excitation exceeding 100. We further demonstrate that an individual wavelength-sized unit cell, representing a meta-scatterer, can also be used for efficient and polarization sensitive SPP excitation in compact plasmonics circuits. Devices capable of converting light of any polarization into surface plasmon polaritons could aid the development of on-chip optical circuits. Anders Pors and co-workers from the University of Southern Denmark and the University of Burgundy in France have now fabricated such a ‘coupler’ from gradient metasurfaces — arrays of miniature gold patches on a thin dielectric layer covering a metal-coated glass substrate. Their device is compatible with wavelengths of light in the telecommunications window (around 1,500 nm) and does not require a specific polarization in order to excite plasmons. Furthermore, it allows the direction of plasmon propagation to be controlled by changing the polarization of the incident beam. Calculations indicate that the coupling efficiency could be as high as 40%, with a directivity of around 50:1.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Biomedical Engineering, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0099c5f711a7bf5a130d0c0c4d145e5305d143c8

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The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. Qiong He
2. Fei Ding
3. Lei Zhou
4. R. Deshpande
5. He-xiu Xu
6. Shulin Sun
7. Sergey I. Bozhevolnyi
8. Guangming Wang

In Biomedical Engineering

1. Fei Ding
2. Yuanqing Yang
3. R. Deshpande
4. Qiong He
5. Lei Zhou
6. He-xiu Xu
7. Shulin Sun
8. Sergey I. Bozhevolnyi

In Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

1. Sergey I. Bozhevolnyi
2. Qiong He
3. Fei Ding
4. Lei Zhou
5. Yuanqing Yang
6. Shulin Sun
7. R. Deshpande
8. He-xiu Xu

Citations in the corpus

• A review of gap-surface plasmon metasurfaces: fundamentals and applications (2018, methodology): “Very recently, unidirectional polarization-controlled SPP coupling has been demonstrated using GSPMs, so that the direction of SPP excitation was switched by the polarization of an LP light [159] or the handedness of a CP incident beam [161, 162].”
• High-efficiency and full-space manipulation of electromagnetic wave-fronts with metasurfaces (2017, background): “Recently, metamaterials (artificial materials made by subwavelength microstructures with tailored EM properties) and particularly their planar version, metasurfaces, have demonstrated strong capabilities to manipulate EM waves, generating many fascinating effects such as anomalous refraction/reflect”