Construction of refractive-index profiles of planar waveguides with additional information obtained from surface plasmon resonance

A surface plasmon resonance (SPR) is excited between a metal film and a graded-index planar waveguide. After the propagation constant of the SPR is measured, the refractive index near the surface of the waveguides, which is difficult to obtain by conventional techniques, is determined experimentally. With this nondestructive technique, combined with the inverse analytical transfer matrix method, the planar waveguide can be profiled to a high degree of accuracy.