Driving plasmonic nanoantennas with triangular lasers and slot waveguides.

Plasmonic nanoantennas can generate high-intensity electric fields in a very small area. However, being passive devices, they need to be excited by external laser sources. The excitation of nanoantennas by semiconductor lasers can be inefficient and a significant amount of light may return back to the laser source after being scattered by the nanoantenna. In this paper, it is shown that the amount of light being returned to the semiconductor laser can be reduced by using dielectric slot waveguides. These waveguides can transport the incident light to the nanoantennas, but the amount of nondirectional back-scattered light is reduced after propagation through the slot waveguide.

[1]  Dai Ohnishi,et al.  Room temperature continuous wave operation of a surface-emitting two-dimensional photonic crystal diode laser. , 2004, Optics express.

[2]  Proton Irradiation-induced Intermixing in In x Ga 1-x As/InP Quantum Wells - the Effect of In Composition , 2006 .

[3]  Jean-Claude Weeber,et al.  Surface plasmon routing along right angle bent metal strips , 2005 .

[4]  Yongzhen Huang,et al.  Analysis of semiconductor microlasers with an equilateral triangle resonator by rate equations , 2001 .

[5]  T. Ebbesen,et al.  Light in tiny holes , 2007, Nature.

[6]  M. Lipson,et al.  Slot waveguides with polycrystalline silicon for electrical injection. , 2009, Optics express.

[7]  Oskar Painter,et al.  Experimental demonstration of a high quality factor photonic crystal microcavity , 2003 .

[8]  V. M. Schneider,et al.  Analysis of strategies to improve the directionality of square lattice band-edge photonic crystal structures. , 2005, Applied optics.

[9]  H. Tan,et al.  In-Plane Coupling of Light From InP-Based Photonic Crystal Band-Edge Lasers Into Single-Mode Waveguides , 2007, IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics.

[10]  H. Tan,et al.  Increasing the coupling efficiency of a microdisk laser to waveguides by using well designed spiral structures , 2010 .

[11]  H. Tan,et al.  Single-mode operation of a large optically pumped triangular laser with lateral air trenches , 2009 .

[12]  Lorenzo Pavesi,et al.  NanoSi low loss horizontal slot waveguides coupled to high Q ring resonators. , 2009, Optics express.

[13]  Andrea Alù,et al.  Input impedance, nanocircuit loading, and radiation tuning of optical nanoantennas. , 2007, Physical review letters.

[14]  L. Di Cioccio,et al.  Heterogeneous integration of microdisk lasers on silicon strip waveguides for optical interconnects , 2006, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[15]  S. Bozhevolnyi,et al.  Long-range surface plasmon polariton nanowire waveguides for device applications. , 2006, Optics express.

[16]  Andrea Alù,et al.  Circuit elements at optical frequencies: nanoinductors, nanocapacitors, and nanoresistors. , 2004, Physical review letters.

[17]  V. M. Schneider,et al.  Steady‐state analysis of a directional square lattice band‐edge photonic crystal lasers , 2005 .

[18]  Kim,et al.  Two-dimensional photonic band-Gap defect mode laser , 1999, Science.

[19]  Shanhui Fan,et al.  Elements for Plasmonic Nanocircuits with Three‐Dimensional Slot Waveguides , 2010, Advanced materials.

[20]  Yong-Hee Lee,et al.  Characteristics of modified single-defect two-dimensional photonic crystal lasers , 2002 .

[21]  Toshihiko Baba,et al.  Photonic crystals and microdisk cavities based on GaInAsP-InP system , 1997 .

[22]  H.T. Hattori,et al.  Large Square Resonator Laser With Quasi-Single-Mode Operation , 2009, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[23]  Yong-Zhen Huang,et al.  Analysis and numerical simulation of eigenmode characteristics for semiconductor lasers with an equilateral triangle micro-resonator , 2001 .

[24]  Lech Wosinski,et al.  Ultracompact low-loss coupler between strip and slot waveguides. , 2009, Optics letters.

[25]  Malin Premaratne,et al.  Coupling of light from microdisk lasers into plasmonic nano-antennas. , 2009, Optics express.

[26]  Qianfan Xu,et al.  Guiding and confining light in void nanostructure. , 2004, Optics letters.

[27]  Naoki Kobayashi,et al.  Triangular-Facet Lasers Coupled by a Rectangular Optical Waveguide , 1997 .

[28]  T.M. Benson,et al.  Directional Emission, Increased Free Spectral Range, and Mode $Q$-Factors in 2-D Wavelength-Scale Optical Microcavity Structures , 2006, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[29]  Yong-Zhen Huang,et al.  Mode quality factor based on far-field emission for square resonators , 2004 .

[30]  Jelena Vucković,et al.  Photonic crystal nanocavity array laser. , 2005, Optics express.

[31]  Masayuki Fujita,et al.  Ultrasmall and ultralow threshold GaInAsP-InP microdisk injection lasers: design, fabrication, lasing characteristics, and spontaneous emission factor , 1999 .

[32]  Ulf Peschel,et al.  Excitation of plasmonic gap waveguides by nanoantennas. , 2009, Optics express.