Deep-subwavelength light routing in nanowire-loaded surface plasmon polariton waveguides: an alternative to the hybrid guiding scheme

Nanowire-loaded surface plasmon polariton waveguide is an extremely simple structure that can be naturally formed by directly dropping a dielectric cylinder onto a metallic substrate. However, despite the substantial emphasis devoted to its hybrid plasmonic counterparts, this waveguiding structure has been paid little attention to so far. Here in this paper, through comprehensive numerical analysis, we reveal that such a configuration can be leveraged to achieve deep-subwavelength field confinement with mode area more than one order of magnitude smaller than that of the conventional hybrid waveguide, while maintaining a moderate attenuation with propagation distance over tens of microns. Two-dimensional parameter mapping concerning physical dimension, shape and material of the nanowire as well as the refractive index of the cladding has disclosed the wide-range existence nature of this plasmonic mode and the feasibility to further balance its confinement and loss.Physics, AppliedSCI(E)EI0ARTICLE44null4