Excitation and characterization of dielectric-loaded surface plasmon-polariton waveguides at telecommunication wavelengths - art. no. 69880T

2008

International audience; The excitation of surface plasmon-polariton (SPP) waveguide modes in 500-nm-wide and 550-nm-high dielectric ridges deposited on a thin gold film is characterized at telecommunication wavelengths, by application of a scanning near-field optical microscope (SNOM), and by utilizing the finite element method (FEM). Different tapering structures for coupling in SPPs, excited at the bare gold-air interface, are investigated with a SNOM, and the dependence of in coupling efficiency on tapering length is characterized by means of FEM calculations. The performance of this in coupling method is compared to an alternative excitation scheme, where the effective index of SPPs in …