Deeply subwavelength SPP components for nanophotonic circuitry

We propose a novel scheme for plasmonic nanocircuits. While SPP waveguides show superior waveguiding properties in terms of tight confinement, a major prerequisite for subwavelength integration, they usually lack the ability to transport light over distances longer than a few tens of μm. Some photonic components that strongly benefit from a realization in plasmonics can be integrated in very small functional units but need low-loss interconnects for real-life applications. The transfer efficiency at the connections between low-loss (e.g. Si waveguides) and high-loss (e.g. plasmonic) waveguides is limited by the maximum achievable modal field overlap of the waveguides. This leads to the idea to form the transitions adiabatically.