Abstract

Plasmonic gap waveguides combine subwavelength light confinement with the possibility to guide and manipulate light on the nanoscale. This concept for nano-optics and optical circuitry requires transferring light from the far field into the nanoworld via optical antennas, to guide it in highly confined waveguides and to distribute it via directional couplers. Here we experimentally demonstrate that all these elements can work together. In particular, we experimentally demonstrate the operation of subwavelength nanoplasmonic couplers. To this end we fabricated respective structures using a focused ion beam (FIB) machine (Fig. 1 a) and evaluated their optical properties at the communication wavelength λ = 1.5 μm.

© 2011 IEEE