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

Abstract

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.