Excitation of surface plasmon polaritons in photonic crystal waveguides that involve dispersive metamaterial

Abstract

Abstract Plasmonics is an area of research that deals mainly with the study of the properties of surface plasmon (SPs) that are collective oscillations of the electron gas in a metal. That is, when the light waves couple with the electronic oscillations, they form a new quasi-particle called the surface plasmon polariton (SPP) that propagates through the surface of the nanometer-sized structure. In this work, we present a numerical study of a photonic crystal waveguide (PCW) composed by an array of cylindrical inclusions with smooth surfaces of dispersive metamaterial. The numerical technique we have used to perform the calculations is known as the “Integral Equation Method”. First, the numerical results are presented of a PCW of infinite length formed by an array of inclusions of dispersive metamaterial (LHM), showing that there is the presence of an SP mode at the frequency ωr = 0.7519. Subsequently, some numerical results of the optical response are presented when the PCW is of finite length, showing the presence of the same surface mode around of ωr = 0.7510. This excitation of the surface plasmon polariton in the proposed waveguide can be another alternative for the development of innumerable applications in several fields of science and technology ranging from biomedicine to telecommunications.