Functional plasmonic nano-circuits with low insertion and propagation losses

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate plasmonic nano-circuits operating as sub-diffraction directional couplers optically excited with high efficiency from free-space using optical Yagi-Uda style antennas at \lambda = 1550 nm. The optical Yagi-Uda style antennas are designed to feed channel plasmon waveguides with high efficiency (45 % in coupling, 60 % total emission), narrow angular directivity (< 40{\deg}) and low insertion loss. SPP gap waveguides exhibit propagation lengths as large as 34 {\mu}m with adiabatically tuned confinement, and are integrated with ultra-compact (5 \mu m x 10 \mu m), highly dispersive directional couplers, which enable 30 dB discrimination over {\Delta}{\lambda} = 200 nm with only 0.3 dB device loss.