Numerical investigation of optical Tamm states in two-dimensional hybrid plasmonic-photonic crystal nanobeams

Abstract

Optical Tamm states (OTSs) in analogy with its electronic counterpart confined at the surface of crystals are optical surface modes at the interfaces between uniform metallic films and distributed Bragg reflectors. In this paper, OTSs are numerically investigated in two-dimensional hybrid plasmonic-photonic crystal nanobeams (HPPCN), which are constructed by inserting a metallic nanoparticle into a photonic crystal nanobeam formed by periodically etching square air holes into dielectric waveguides. The evidences of OTSs can be verified by transmission spectra and the field distribution at resonant frequency. Similar to OTSs in one-dimensional multilayer structures OTSs in HPPCN can be excited by both TE and TM polarization. The physical origin of OTSs in HPPCN is due to the combined contribution of strong reflection imposed by the photonic band gap (PBG) of the photonic crystal (PC) nanobeam and strong backward scattering exerted by the nanoparticle. For TE, incidence OTSs can be obtained at the frequency near the center of the photonic band gap. The transmissivity and the resonant frequency can be finely tuned by the dimension of nanoparticles. While for TM incidence OTSs are observed for relatively larger metallic nanoparticles compared with TE polarization. The differences between TE and TM polarization can be explained by two reasons. For one reason stronger backward scattering of nanoparticles for TE polarization can be achieved by the excitation of localized surface plasmon polariton of nanoparticles. This assumption has been proved by examining the scattering, absorption, and extinction cross section of the metallic nanoparticle. The other can be attributed to the deep and wide PBG available for TE polarization with less number of air holes compared with TM polarization. Our results show great promise in extending the application scope of OTSs from one-dimensional structures to practical integrated photonic devices and circuits.