Abstract
Abstract
This paper discusses the quality factors Q and the intensity figures of merit (IFoM) evaluating the intensity and leakage of modes of the reflection flux and of the plane-wave and locally excited transmitted fluxes of insulator-metal-insulator (IMI) and metal-insulator-metal (MIM) 2D planar thin-film stacks, here air-Au-glass and air-Au-SiO2-Au-glass stacks respectively. These thin film stacks sustain a single surface plasmon polariton (SPP) and multiple planar waveguide (PWG) modes. The Q and IFoM of the 3D dispersion graph (in-plane wave vector k
ρ
/k
0 ∈ [0, 1.52]/frequency ω ∈ [0.5, 2.7] eV/observable dispersion) are calculated and analyzed along 2D cuts where either the in-plane wave vector k
ρ
/k
0 or the frequency ω are varied the other independent variable being kept fixed. Here these two cuts are called spatial (ω fixed) and frequency (k
ρ
/k
0 fixed) domains. Due to a lower leakage, the Q and IFoM of the IMI and MIM thin film stack modes are significantly larger in the spatial domain than in the frequency domain. In the spatial domain the IMI and MIM stack modes dominate at low and high frequencies respectively. In the frequency domain, the Q and IFoM of a MIM stack mode is always larger than that of an IMI stack. Our results span a large domain of frequencies in the SPP and RPP region and of the in-plane wave vector whereas the results in the literature presented above concern only particular laser frequencies and limited in-plane wave vector values. Our Q and IFoM of the 2D planar thin film stack modes, obtained with optimized independent variables, are larger than those of other planar thin film stacks but smaller than some 2D/3D nano scale samples with an involved geometry. The simplicity of producing these simple IMI and MIM stacks permit their use in the applications.