Nanoscale light confinement and nonlinearity of hybrid plasmonic waveguide with a metal cap

Abstract

A nonlinear hybrid plasmonic waveguide (HPW) with a metal cap on a nonlinear material-on-insulator rib is proposed. By using a finite-difference time-domain method, its light confinement and effective nonlinearity coefficient of the Kerr effect for all-optical switches are analyzed in detail. Numerical simulations illustrate that the nonlinear HPW structure has nanoscale confinement and high effective nonlinearity coefficient at the wavelength of 1550 nm. Consequently, the HPW can be used in all-optical signal processing of integrated photonics.