Cutoff-cladding waveguides: Subdiffraction guided modes near cutoff

Abstract

We propose a class of waveguides operating near cutoff such that electromagnetic energy is mainly bound to the cladding rather than the dielectric core to achieve subdiffraction confinement of light. The cladding incorporates an alternating stack of thin films that exhibit uniaxial form birefringence with a high contrast between the effective principal dielectric constants. In contrast to conventional dielectric waveguides, the effective modal length for the fundamental mode of the proposed waveguide diverges at a much slower rate for core thicknesses less than a twentieth of the illumination wavelength, and is comparable to that attainable for plasmonic waveguides. The proposed waveguide can be exploited for important applications such as optoelectronic integration, and the fundamental mode exhibits a near-uniform spatial field distribution potentially allowing for position-independent spontaneous emission enhancement effects.