Design and simulations of plasmonic planar fiber to chip coupler works at the optical communication wavelength

Abstract

Transmitting, splitting, and coupling of optical power are fundamental applications in photonics integrated circuits, which can be designed and fabricated on various material platforms. Material platforms characterized by high refractive index contrast allow higher integration of photonic devices into photonic integrated circuit, but mode field diameter of waveguides based on high refractive index material platform is more than 20 times smaller in comparison to mode field diameter of single mode optical fiber. This makes it more difficult coupling optical radiation from optical fiber to photonic integrated circuit. Current designs of optical couplers require complex technical and fabrication technology solutions with 100 nm resolution and less. Planar fiber to chip coupler, operating at wavelengths using in optical communication systems, based on enhancing surface plasmon polaritons requires for its production simple and more generally available technological steps operate with lower resolution. We report the design of plasmonic coupler and simulation of its properties by finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation method.