Nanofocusing via Efficient Excitation Surface Plasmon Polaritons in a Hollow Aluminum Wedge

Author

Yongzhu Chen ; Xiangsheng Xie ; Li Li ; Jianying Zhou

Author_Institution

Key Lab. of Numerical Controlled Technol., Guangdong Polytech. Normal Univ., Guangzhou, China

Volume

25

Issue

10

fYear

2013

fDate

15-May-13

Firstpage

929

Lastpage

931

Abstract

Efficient nanofocusing down to a few nanometers in a hollow aluminum wedge is numerically investigated. The waveguide propagation modes are efficiently converted to internal surface plasmon polaritons via a pair of grooves fabricated at the inner surface of the wedge and a remarkable field enhancement is realized at the aperture. The excitation efficiency can be further improved by optimizing spatial wavefront modulation of the incident light field via a binary optical element, and the output intensity through a 5-nm aperture is enhanced by 786 times compared with a conventional 100-nm aperture hollow metallic wedge.

Keywords

optical focusing; optical waveguides; polaritons; surface plasmons; binary optical element; efficient excitation surface plasmon polaritons; excitation efficiency; field enhancement; hollow aluminum wedge; hollow metallic wedge; incident light field; internal surface plasmon polaritons; nanofocusing; spatial wavefront modulation; waveguide propagation modes; Aluminum waveguide; nanofocusing; nanostructrues; surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2013.2256119

Filename

6491443