Vertical coupling between short range surface plasmon polariton mode and dielectric waveguide mode

Abstract

Coupling performance between a short range surface plasmon polariton (SRSPP) mode and a conventional dielectric waveguide mode is demonstrated numerically. Simulation results show that the coupling length, as short as tens of microns, can be realized because the field of SRSPP extremely concentrates to the metal surface. SRSPP-based hybrid coupler provides not only an approach to realize highly compact functional devices, such as the TE-pass polarizer with high performance, but also an integratable route for efficiently exciting SRSPP mode, which is very useful in the SRSPP-based biosensor or SRSPP-assisted emission enhancement devices.