Plasmonic Communications: Light on a Wire

Abstract

Leuthold, J.; Hoessbacher, C.; Muehlbrandt, S.; Melikyan, A.; Kohl, M.; Koos, C.; Freude, W.; Dolores Calzadilla, V.M.; Smit, M.K.; Suarez, I.; Martin, A.; Martinez Pastor, J.; Fitrakis, E.P.; Tomkos, I. Please check the document version of this publication:• A submitted manuscript is the author's version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences between the submitted version and the official published version of record. People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for the final version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publisher's website.• The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review.• The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers. Link to publication General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.• You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. J u e r g L e u t h o ld a n d c o ll e a g u e s J u e r g L e u t h o ld a n d c o ll e a g u e sSe e en d of ar tic le fo r fu ll au th or lis t.Illustations by Phil Saunders/spacechannel.org

Advances in small lasers

“…Recent waveguide embedded nanolasers show that over time such problems might be solved 85 . A related application with less stringent requirements is the use of other small plasmonic devices such as detectors, waveguides and modulators for an integrated optics platform with increased performance, and greatly reduced size and power consumption 3 . Efficient sub-wavelength plasmonic amplifiers and lasers are a prerequisite for any complex plasmonic integrated circuit as absorption by the metal needs to be compensated for in these circuits (Fig.…”

“…Lasers are an area of photonics where miniaturization holds particular promise but also one where miniaturization has turned out to be particularly challenging. Potential applications of ever smaller lasers include on-chip optical communication and data processing which may allow data rates beyond what is feasible in the realm of electronics [1][2][3] . Continued miniaturization of lasers may also open new avenues in medical imaging and sensing if such lasers can be made biocompatible and implantable 4,5 .…”

Propagation length enhancement of surface plasmon polaritons in gold nano-/micro-waveguides by the interference with photonic modes in the surrounding active dielectrics

“…Therefore, this effective propagation length found in the present work would imply an "effective gain" in the dielectric nanocomposite of around 560 cm − 1 , according to Equation (1). Nevertheless, the number of electronhole pairs (excitons) per QD obtained under the optical pumping density used in the experiment (< 10 KW/cm 2 ) would be N eh ≈ 0.13; hence, the expected gain in our nanocomposite (with ff = 10 − 3 ) would be limited to only g = 0.4 cm − 1 (see Section S7 in the Supplementary Information), preventing the compensation of losses by this mechanism.…”

“…The ability of metal nanostructures to manipulate light below the diffraction limit can be the basis of the miniaturization and reduction of power consumption of future photonic technology [1]. Such unusual optical property arises from the hybrid electromagnetic wave and charge surface state nature of the surface plasmon polariton (SPP) propagating along metal (or plasmonic) waveguides.…”

High speed plasmonic modulator array enabling dense optical interconnect solutions

“…However, silicon photonic modulators occupy a length in the order of several millimeters, if not incorporated into a resonant structure. More recently, plasmonics has emerged as an interesting and compact solution for integration of active devices [10,11]. Plasmonics indeed allows for extremely compact devices of a few µm 2 , because -in contrast to photonic waves -surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are not diffraction limited [12,13].…”