Toward tunable light propagation and emission in thin nanostructured plasmonic waveguides

High-resolution angle-resolved transmission measurements are carried out through nanostructured plasmonic waveguides made of thin gold films with very narrow slits deposited on GaAs substrates. They reveal transmission intensity modulations along the air/metal surface plasmon band, due to the presence of metal/substrate surface modes. Two propagation regimes have been identified. In this plasmonic waveguide, the radiative emission can be enhanced or inhibited by a slight modification of the refractive index of the substrate (δn∕n≃1%), allowing to control the propagation regime of surface plasmon waves along the air/metal interface.

[1]  Kitson,et al.  Full Photonic Band Gap for Surface Modes in the Visible. , 1996, Physical review letters.

[2]  K. Vasilev,et al.  Surface-plasmon-mediated single-molecule fluorescence through a thin metallic film. , 2005, Physical review letters.

[3]  Federico Capasso,et al.  Single-mode surface-plasmon laser , 2000 .

[4]  E. Ozbay.  Plasmonics: Merging Photonics and Electronics at Nanoscale Dimensions , 2006, Science.

[5]  S. Bozhevolnyi,et al.  Surface plasmon polariton based modulators and switches operating at telecom wavelengths , 2004 .

[6]  Willie J Padilla,et al.  Dynamical electric and magnetic metamaterial response at terahertz frequencies , 2006, 2006 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and 2006 Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference.

[7]  Jean-Luc Pelouard,et al.  Angle-resolved transmission measurements through anisotropic two-dimensional plasmonic crystals. , 2008, Optics letters.

[8]  G. Steinmeyer,et al.  Femtosecond light transmission and subradiant damping in plasmonic crystals. , 2005, Physical review letters.

[9]  E. Palik.  Handbook of Optical Constants of Solids , 1997 .

[10]  Jean-Luc Pelouard,et al.  Efficient light absorption in metal–semiconductor–metal nanostructures , 2004 .

[11]  Jean-Luc Pelouard,et al.  Horizontal and vertical surface resonances in transmission metallic gratings , 2002 .

[12]  H. Lezec,et al.  All-optical modulation by plasmonic excitation of CdSe quantum dots , 2007 .

[13]  W. Barnes,et al.  Surface plasmon subwavelength optics , 2003, Nature.

[14]  Hervé Rigneault,et al.  Enhancement of single-molecule fluorescence detection in subwavelength apertures. , 2005, Physical review letters.

[15]  D. Sarid.  Long-Range Surface-Plasma Waves on Very Thin Metal Films , 1981 .

[16]  Carlo Sirtori,et al.  Long-wavelength (? ? 8–11.5??µm) semiconductor lasers with waveguides based on surface plasmons , 1998 .

[17]  A. D. Boardman,et al.  Electromagnetic surface modes , 1982 .

[18]  High-contrast modulation of light with light by control of surface plasmon polariton wave coupling , 2004, cond-mat/0405448.