Dimensional confinement and waveguide effect of Dyakonov surface waves in twisted confined media

Abstract

Abstract We theoretically study Dyakonov surface waveguide modes that propagate along the planar strip interfacial waveguide between two uniaxial dielectrics. We demonstrate that owing to the one-dimensional electromagnetic confinement, Dyakonov surface waveguide modes can propagate in the directions that are forbidden for the classical Dyakonov surface waves at the infinite interface. We show that this situation is similar to a waveguide effect and formulate the resonance conditions at which Dyakonov surface waveguide modes exist. We demonstrate that the propagation of such modes without losses is possible. We also consider a case of two-dimensional confinement, where the interface between two anisotropic dielectrics is bounded in both orthogonal directions. We show that such a structure supports Dyakonov surface cavity modes. Analytical results are confirmed by comparing with full-wave solutions of Maxwell’s equations. We believe that our work paves the way toward new insights in the field of surface waves in anisotropic media.