Metal-dielectric-metal plasmonic waveguide devices for manipulating light at the nanoscale

We review some of the recent advances in the development of subwavelength plasmonic devices for manipulating light at the nanoseale, drawing examples from our own work in metal-dielectric-metal （MDM） plasmonic waveguide devices. We introduce bends, splitters, and mode converters for MDM waveguides with no additional loss. We also demonstrate that optical gain provides a mechanism for on/off switching in MDM plasmonic waveguides. Highly efficient compact couplers between dielectric waveguides and MDM waveguides are also introduced.

Nanoplasmonic magneto-optical isolator [Invited]

We introduce a nanoplasmonic isolator that consists of a cylindrical resonator placed close to a metal-dielectric-metal(MDM) waveguide. The material filling the waveguide and resonator is a magneto-optical(MO) material, and the structure is under an externally applied static magnetic field. We theoretically investigate the properties of the structure and show that the cavity mode without MO activity splits into two modes when the MO activity is present. In addition, we find that the presence of the MDM waveguide leads to a second resonance due to the geometrical asymmetry caused by the existence of the waveguide. We also show that, when MO activity is present, the cavity becomes a traveling wave resonator. Thus, the transmission of the structure depends on the direction of the incident light, and the proposed structure operates as an optical isolator.

Topological edge states at singular points in non-Hermitian plasmonic systems

We introduce non-Hermitian plasmonic waveguide-cavity systems with topological edge states(TESs)at singular points.The compound unit cells of the structures consist of metal-dielectric-metal(MDM)stub resonators side-coupled to an MDM waveguide.We show that we can realize both a TES and an exceptional point at the same frequency when a proper amount of loss is introduced into a finite three-unit-cell structure.We also show that the finite structure can exhibit both a TES and a spectral singularity when a proper amount of gain is introduced into the structure.In addition,we show that we can simultaneously realize a unidirectional spectral singularity and a TES when proper amounts of loss and gain are introduced into the structure.We finally show that this singularity leads to extremely high sensitivity of the reflected light intensity to variations of the refractive index of the active materials in the structure.TESs at singular points could potentially contribute to the development of singularity-based plasmonic devices with enhanced performance.