Efficient surface plasmon field confinement in one-dimensional crystal line-defect waveguides

Jean-Claude Weeber (1, 2) , Anne-Laure Baudrion (3, 2) , Alexandre Bouhelier (1, 2) , Aurélien Bruyant (3, 2) , Gérard Colas Des Francs (1, 2) , Rashid Zia (2) , Alain Dereux (1, 2)

1 ICB - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Carnot de Bourgogne
2 LPUB - Laboratoire de Physique de l'Université de Bourgogne
3 LNIO - Laboratoire de Nanotechnologie et d'Instrumentation Optique

The authors operate a near-field optical microscope to investigate surface plasmon polariton (SPP) propagation along linear waveguides opened into one-dimensional (1D) plasmonic crystals, i.e., crystals featuring a single lattice plane orientation. They show that efficient SPP field confinement can be achieved by this type of waveguide although no band gap exists in the direction perpendicular to the waveguide axis. From computed wave-vector diagrams, they show that 1D plasmonic crystals can open a wide range of prohibited propagation directions preventing from a significant coupling of the waveguide SPP modes with the crystal Bloch modes. Finally, the authors demonstrate that the field distributions of the guided SPP modes can be qualitatively understood from simple Ewald constructions. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.

Domaines: Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique; Optique / photonique; Optique [physics.optics]

Jean-Claude Weeber, Anne-Laure Baudrion, Alexandre Bouhelier, Aurélien Bruyant, Gérard Colas Des Francs, et al.. Efficient surface plasmon field confinement in one-dimensional crystal line-defect waveguides. Applied Physics Letters, 2006, 89 (21), pp.211109. ⟨10.1063/1.2392998⟩. ⟨hal-00472405⟩