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Tunable directional coupling of surface plasmon polaritons with linearly polarized light

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Abstract

A tunable directional surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) coupler, which utilizes the polarization direction of linearly polarized incident light to control the SPP coupling direction, is proposed. The SPP coupler consists of a column of V-shaped slot nanoantennas, which can support two kinds of plasmon resonant modes that have opposite symmetries. By controlling the polarization direction of linearly polarized incident light, the power flow of SPP coupled to the two opposite directions perpendicular to the column is continuously tuned. For 45° and 135° polarized incidence, SPP are unidirectional coupled to the two opposite directions, respectively. A highest extinction ratio of 31.6 dB is achieved, and the extinction ratio keeps larger than 10 dB within a wavelength of 135 nm.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Key Basic Research Program of China (Grant 2013CB328702) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 11374074 and 11176009).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China

    Feng Huang, Xiangqian Jiang, Hanning Yang, Siren Li & Xiudong Sun

  2. Key Lab of Micro-Optics and Photonic Technology of Heilongjiang Province, Harbin, 150001, China

    Feng Huang, Xiangqian Jiang, Hanning Yang, Siren Li & Xiudong Sun

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  1. Feng Huang
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  2. Xiangqian Jiang
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  3. Hanning Yang
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  4. Siren Li
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  5. Xiudong Sun
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Correspondence to Xiudong Sun.

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Huang, F., Jiang, X., Yang, H. et al. Tunable directional coupling of surface plasmon polaritons with linearly polarized light. Appl. Phys. B 122, 16 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-015-6306-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-015-6306-7

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