Realizing vertical light coupling and splitting in nano-plasmonic multilevel circuits.

We present a novel technique for vertical coupling of light guided by nanoscale plasmonic slot waveguides (PSWs). A triangularly-shaped plasmonic slot waveguide rotator is exploited to attain such coupling with a good efficiency over a wide bandwidth. Using this approach, light propagating in a horizontal direction is efficiently coupled to propagate in the vertical direction and vice versa. We also propose a power divider configuration to evenly split a vertically coupled light wave to two horizontal channels. A detailed parametric study of the triangular rotator is demonstrated with multiple configurations analyzed. This structure is suitable for efficient coupling in multilevel nano circuit environment.

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