Efficient waveguide coupler based on metal materials

Abstract

Because of the diffraction limit of light, the scale of optical element stays in the order of wavelength, which makes the interface optics and nano-electronic components cannot be directly matched, thus the development of photonics technology encounters a bottleneck. In order to solve the problem that coupling of light into the subwavelength waveguide, this paper proposes a model of coupler based on metal materials. By using Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SPPs) wave, incident light can be efficiently coupled into waveguide of diameter less than 100 nm. This paper mainly aims at near infrared wave band, and tests a variety of the combination of metal materials, and by changing the structural parameters to get the maximum coupling efficiency. This structure splits the plane incident light with wavelength of 864 nm, the width of 600 nm into two uniform beams, and separately coupled into the waveguide layer whose width is only about 80 nm, and the highest coupling efficiency can reach above 95%. Using SPPs structure will be an effective method to break through the diffraction limit and implement photonics device high-performance miniaturization. We can further compress the light into small scale fiber or waveguide by using the metal coupler, and to save the space to hold more fiber or waveguide layer, so that we can greatly improve the capacity of optical communication. In addition, high-performance miniaturization of the optical transmission medium can improve the integration of optical devices, also provide a feasible solution for the photon computer research and development in the future.