Effect of dipole location on profile properties of symmetric surface plasmon polariton mode in Au/Al₂O₃/Au waveguide

Abstract

This study uses a dipole embedded in Al₂O₃ layer to excite a symmetric surface plasmon polariton (SPP) mode in Au/Al₂O₃/Au waveguide to investigate its profile properties by using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The excited dipole decay radiatively direct near-field coupling to SPP mode owing to thin Al₂O₃ layer of 100 nm. The effects of electric and magnetic field intensity profiles and decay length have been considered and characterized. It is found that dipole location is an important factor to influence the horizontal and vertical profile properties of symmetric SPP mode in Au/Al₂O₃/Au waveguide. The amplitudes of electric and magnetic field intensity and the wavelengths of metal-insulator-metal (MIM) SPP resonance mode can be tuned by varying dipole location. The horizontal and vertical decay lengths are 19 and 24 nm, respectively. It is expected that the Au/Al₂O₃/Au waveguide structure is very useful for the practical applications of designing a SPP source.

Keywords

waveguide / surface plasmon polariton (SPP) / profile properties

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 60907024 and 61036011), the New Teachers’ Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (No. 20100001120024), Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg