Development of active surface plasmonic polariton waveguide

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Conventional photonic or optoelectronic components are designed to deal with the optical wave directly. These components need a featured size in thousands of wavelength (i.e., in a range from 100micron to 1mm) in order to sufficiently amplify or manipulate the optical wave. Therefore, a chip in a typical size of several centimeters cannot have many such components integrated. The surface plasmonic polariton (SPP) wave, appearing as a resonance between the electromagnetic field and free electrons at a dielectric and conductor interface, can be tightly confined in a tiny cross-sectional area beyond the diffraction limit and can propagate at a much slower speed as compared to the optical wave, which means the SPP wave has a much shorter equivalent wavelength and the SPP device will only need a greatly reduced size for the same function. As such, we can build integrated SPP devices with greatly increased density to fulfill complex functions that will be impossible for conventional integrated photonic or optoelectronic devices in areas like optical communication and optical signal processing. We can also expect a greatly enhanced performance or even new functions on solitary SPP devices due to the largely extended interaction time of the SPP wave with its guiding medium and the greatly intensified nonlinear effect. The propagation loss in current SPP waveguides, however, sets a major limit to their applications. Our proposed active SPP waveguide in this research program is aimed to realize the guidance, amplification, and control of the SPP wave simultaneously. If successful, it will overcome the major obstacle in the exploration of the SPP wave. Consequently, a whole family of devices and their integrations can be developed ranging from the generation, amplification, modulation, transmission, and control of the SPP wave at the optical frequency. Hence it will have a significant impact on the development of advanced components for optical communication networks, sensor systems, and signal processing systems. The structure and device invented and knowledge acquired through this research program may also benefit other researchers in this field and a number of Canadian companies.