Abstract

Engineering plasmonic metamaterials with anisotropic optical dispersion enables us to tailor the properties of metamaterial-based waveguides. We investigate plasmonic waveguides with dielectric cores and multilayer metal-dielectric claddings with hyperbolic dispersion. Without using any homogenization, we calculate the resonant eigenmodes of the finite-width cladding layers, and find agreement with the resonant features in the dispersion of the cladded waveguides. We show that at the resonant widths, the propagating modes of the waveguides are coupled to the cladding eigenmodes and hence, are strongly absorbed. By avoiding the resonant widths in the design of the actual waveguides, the strong absorption can be eliminated.

Highlights

  • Metal-dielectric interfaces can support highly confined surface waves known as surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs)

  • Engineering plasmonic metamaterials with anisotropic optical dispersion enables us to tailor the properties of metamaterial-based waveguides

  • We investigate plasmonic waveguides with dielectric cores and multilayer metal-dielectric claddings with hyperbolic dispersion

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Summary

Introduction

Metal-dielectric interfaces can support highly confined surface waves known as surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs). Propagation losses in such HMMwaveguides are high [33] Another approach is to sandwich a dielectric core between claddings with hyperbolic dispersion, forming an HMM-Insulator-HMM (HIH) structure [37]. We explore the limitations of the effective medium theory (EMT) by explicitly calculating the properties of metal-dielectric lamellar claddings of the HIH-structure, and find out the optimum number of the layers (Section 2). These one-dimensional studies are followed by the analysis of more realistic finite-width HIH waveguides and a detailed examination of the feature which emerge in dispersion properties of the structure (Section 3).

Propagation length and mode confinement in the HIH waveguide
Finite-width HIH waveguide
Conclusion
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