Low-loss surface modes and lossy hybrid modes in metamaterial waveguides

Abstract

We show that waveguides with a dielectric core and a lossy metamaterial cladding (metamaterial-dielectric guides) can support hybrid ordinary-surface modes previously only known for metal-dielectric waveguides. These hybrid modes are potentially useful for frequency filtering applications as sharp changes in field attenuation occur at tailorable frequencies. Our results also show that the surface modes of a metamaterial-dielectric waveguide with comparable electric and magnetic losses can be less lossy than the surface modes of an analogous metal-dielectric waveguide with electric losses alone. Through a characterization of both slab and cylindrical metamaterial-dielectric guides, we find that the surface modes of the cylindrical guides show promise as candidates for all-optical control of low-intensity pulses.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures. Accepted by Photonics and Nanostructures - Fundamentals and Applications. This version: Title is extended. Section 3 (Modes) and 4 (Characterization) are revised. The abstract, discussion and summary are also revised accordingl

A transversely localized light in a waveguide: the analytical solution and its potential application

“…(see [28] and references there). The developed nanooptics increases an interest to the theory of a light in the planar waveguides characterized by various geometry and material properties [24,26,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. Now the researchers need to use the numerical methods providing only numerical data of the calculations restricted by the concrete physical and geometrical parameters of the planar waveguides.…”

“…It is necessary to have the eigen mode dispersion relation in the form k = k(ω) that can provide principal information about the localized electromagnetic fields such as the phase and group velocities, transverse shape and propagation length of the low-losses modes(see [12] [28] and references there). Unfortunately, the transcendental equation (3) does not have analytical solution and this is the well-known long-term problem (see for example references [22,23,31,32,[43][44][45]) of general analysis of light in various waveguides. The existing theoretical approaches permit only the approximate solutions of the transcendental equation in three limiting cases: i) near cuttoff, ii) at short-wave limit Lω/c ≫ 1, and iii) in the strongly asymmetrical case (see, for example [22]).…”

“…The existing theoretical approaches permit only the approximate solutions of the transcendental equation in three limiting cases: i) near cuttoff, ii) at short-wave limit Lω/c ≫ 1, and iii) in the strongly asymmetrical case (see, for example [22]). While the nanowaveguide structures characterized by the intermediate sizes (Lω/c ≤ 1) are studied only by the numerical methods [22,43] (see also recent works [24][25][26][27][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]).…”

“…Herein, the simple form of (8)-(10) will clarify the physical analysis and provide a significant advance in studying concrete tasks. It is worth noting a simplicity and perfect relation in (8) The intensive recent numerical studies of the light field propagation in the planar nanowaveguide with the metamaterial cladding for the waveguides have been performed in the works [31,32]. This analysis required quite large computing resources.…”

“…We compare the numerical results for TM even modes [31,32] with our analytical solution (9). The metamaterial claddings were described by the Drude-like model of permittivity and permeability:…”