Nanoscale Metamaterial Optical Waveguides with Ultrahigh Refractive Indices

Abstract

We propose deep-subwavelength optical waveguides based on metal-dielectric multilayer indefinite metamaterials with ultrahigh effective refractive indices. Waveguide modes with different mode orders are systematically analyzed with numerical simulations based on both metal-dielectric multilayer structures and the effective medium approach. The dependences of waveguide mode indices, propagation lengths and mode areas on different mode orders, free space wavelengths and sizes of waveguide cross sections are studied. Furthermore, waveguide modes are also illustrated with iso-frequency contours in the wave vector space in order to investigate the mechanism of waveguide mode cutoff for high order modes. The deep-subwavelength optical waveguide with a size smaller than λ0/50 and a mode area in the order of 10-4 λ02 is realized, and an ultrahigh effective refractive index up to 62.0 is achieved at the telecommunication wavelength. This new type of metamaterial optical waveguide opens up opportunities for various applications in enhanced light-matter interactions.

22 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Optical Hyperlens: Far-field imaging beyond the diffraction limit
• Ultra-broadband Light Absorption by a Sawtooth Anisotropic Metamaterial Slab
• Non-local effects in effective medium response of nano-layered meta-materials
• Three-dimensional metamaterials with an ultra-high effective refractive index over broad bandwidth
• Nanowire waveguide made from extremely anisotropic metamaterials

Cited by in corpus (7)

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• Diffraction-free optical beam propagation with near-zero phase variation in extremely anisotropic metamaterials
• Deep subwavelength beam propagation in extremely loss-anisotropic metamaterials
• Wideband resonant polarizers made with ultra-sparse dielectric nanowire grids