Abstract
Conventional polarizers including sheet, wire-grid, prism, and Brewster-angle type polarizers are not easily integrated with photonic circuits. Polarizing elements on the nanoscale are indispensable for integrated all-optical nanophotonic devices. Here, we propose a plasmonic nanopolarizer based on a silver nanorod. The polarization characteristics result from the excitation of different resonance modes of localized surface plasmons (LSPs) at different wavelengths. Furthermore, the polarization characteristics in near field regions have been demonstrated by the electric field distribution of the nanorod based on finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation, indicating a strong local resonant cavity with a standing wave mode for transverse electric (TE) polarization and weak electric fields distributed for transverse magnetic (TM) polarization. The nanopolarizer can efficiently work in the near field region, exhibiting a nanopolarization effect. In addition, very high extinction ratios and extremely low insertion losses can be achieved. Particularly, the nanopolarizer can work in a broadband from visible to near-infrared wavelengths, which can be tuned by changing the aspect ratio of the nanorod. The plasmonic nanopolarizer is a promising candidate for potential applications in the integration of nanophotonic devices and circuits.
Highlights
With the rapid development of information and communication techniques, data transmission rates with ultra-high speed greatly require increasing integration of photonic devices and circuits, and there are growing demands for the miniaturization and high performance of photonic devices.Polarization plays a key role in components such as switches, isolators, and modulators
Crystals 2020, 10, 447 elements, micropolarizers have been developed by using in-line fibers [2,3,4,5], photonic crystals [6,7,8,9], nanowire-grids [10,11,12,13,14], plasmonic structures [15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22], and metasurfaces [23,24], etc, wherein the polarizers based on the plasmonic structures have been widely reported due to their high performance in recent years
An ultrahigh extinction ratio and extremely short length resonant integrated optic transverse electric (TE) pass polarizer were proposed theoretically, which was based on the interaction between the short range surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and the mode guided by a dielectric waveguide [21]
Summary
With the rapid development of information and communication techniques, data transmission rates with ultra-high speed greatly require increasing integration of photonic devices and circuits, and there are growing demands for the miniaturization and high performance of photonic devices. An ultrahigh extinction ratio and extremely short length resonant integrated optic transverse electric (TE) pass polarizer were proposed theoretically, which was based on the interaction between the short range surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and the mode guided by a dielectric waveguide [21]. Since the micrometer-scale bulky components of photonic devices have limited the integration of these components on a much small scale further [25], nanophotonic components based on surface plasmons beyond the diffraction limit can make them ideal candidates for the integration of photonic devices on the nanometer scale [26,27,28,29,30] In this case, the polarizing components on the nanoscale (i.e., nanopolarizers) are indispensable for their future applications. High extinction ratios and extremely low insertion losses at the visible to near-infrared wavelengths can be achieved by tuning the nanorod sizes
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