Abstract
The development of a photonic device based on a non-diffracting surface plasmon polariton (SPP) beam can effectively improve the anti-interference ability. Furthermore, an easily adjustable on-chip routing device is highly desirable and extremely important in practical optical communication applications. However, no non-diffracting SPP-beam-based spin routing devices with high tunability in multiple degrees of freedom have been reported. In this study, we theoretically designed a simple micro-nano structure to realize a highly adjustable non-diffracting SPP-beam-based spin router using Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) simulation. The simulation results show that the structure enables spin-controlled nondiffracting SPP-beam directional launching. The launching direction of the nondiffracting SPP beam can be dynamically rotated counterclockwise or clockwise by changing the incident angle. Hence, the routing SPP beam can be coupled to different output waveguides to provide dynamic tunability. Moreover, this device shows good broadband response ability. This work may motivate the design and fabrication of future practical photon routing devices.
Highlights
Due to the strong light-electron coupling at the interface of a metal and a medium, surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) have enticing properties, such as the subwavelength confinement and surface enhancement of the optical field
Due to the benefits provided by these features, SPPs are widely used in designing on-chip photonics devices, such as optical switches [1], optical logical gates [2,3], and other optical parameter detecting devices [4,5], which will be important in future information processing and all optical communication
A large number of studies have been conducted regarding the control of SPPs on metal surfaces with well-designed nanostructures [6,7,8] by manipulating optical parameters such as wavelength [9], phase [10,11,12], and polarization state [13,14,15] of the incident light
Summary
Due to the strong light-electron coupling at the interface of a metal and a medium, surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) have enticing properties, such as the subwavelength confinement and surface enhancement of the optical field. Due to the benefits provided by these features, SPPs are widely used in designing on-chip photonics devices, such as optical switches [1], optical logical gates [2,3], and other optical parameter detecting devices [4,5], which will be important in future information processing and all optical communication. The light parameters, such as wavelength and polarization state, which determine the SPPs’ directional launching, are the key functionality for designing SPP-based on-chip photon routing devices. Most reported works have only realized two possible SPP directional launching paths by controlling the polarization states of the incident light, which limits the tunability.
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