Ultra-compact directional couplers and Mach–Zehnder interferometers employing surface plasmon polaritons
✍ Scribed by Zhanghua Han; Liu Liu; Erik Forsberg
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2006
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 304 KB
- Volume
- 259
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0030-4018
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✦ Synopsis
Optical directional couplers and Mach-Zehnder interferometers employing surface plasmon polaritons are proposed and their characteristics are analyzed numerically using a finite-difference time-domain method. It is shown that these devices can have transverse size smaller than the incident wavelength and can then be regarded as true subwavelength photonic elements. The ultra-compact characteristic of these devices can be utilized as a basis of next generation of integrated photonic circuits. Furthermore, calculations also show that these devices behave differently from their traditional all-dielectric counterparts. For the proposed optical directional coupler, the phase difference between the two output ports will no longer be 90°even when the two ports have the same power outputs.