Compact and Efficient Ring Resonator–Based Plasmonic Lens with Multiple Functionalities

Abstract

AbstractA novel plasmonic lens based on a metal–insulator–metal bus waveguide coupled to a ring resonator is proposed and numerically investigated. The inner edge of the ring resonator was perforated with nanogrooves so that light emitted by these nanogrooves was sharply focused at the center of the ring. The structure relies on interference and resonance theory. The principle of the lens can be extended to a device 1 × N demultiplexer as well as a 1 × N power splitter. These functionalities were validated through finite element method simulations. Results show that the lens had a sharp focus, without any smearing, and a full width at half maximum (FWHM) intensity of around 240 nm. For the 1 × N demultiplexer, the selectivity was high with an FWHM bandwidth of less than 20 nm and crosstalk of less than − 10 dB, whereas the 1 × N power splitter had a narrow bandwidth and was able to split power into N equal parts with negligible imbalance. The proposed focusing structure is compact, and the simulation results show that the structure performs the various functionalities with high efficiency. Due to this, these structures will be of utmost utility in future all-optical signal processing systems.