Ultracompact Nano-Mechanical Plasmonic Phase Modulators

Abstract

Dielectrics' refractive index limits photonics miniaturization. By coupling light to metal's free electrons, plasmonic devices achieve deeper localization, which scales with the device geometric size. However, when localization approaches the skin depth, energy shifts from the dielectric into the metal, hindering active modulation. Here we propose a nano-electromechanical phase modulation principle exploiting the extraordinarily strong dependence of the phase velocity of metal-insulator-metal(MIM) gap plasmons on dynamically variable gap size. We demonstrate a 23 μm long non-resonant modulator having 1.5 π rad range with 1.7 dB excess loss at 780 nm. Analysis shows an ultracompact 1 μm${}^2$ footprint π rad phase modulator can be realized, more than an order of magnitude smaller than any previously shown. Remarkably, this size reduction is achieved without incurring extra loss, since the nanobeam-plasmon coupling strength increases at a similar rate as the loss. Such small, high density electrically controllable components may find applications in optical switch fabrics and reconfigurable flat plasmonic optics.

References in corpus (7)

• Modal Analysis and Coupling in Metal-Insulator-Metal Waveguides
• High quality factor gigahertz frequencies in nanomechanical diamond resonators
• A microelectromechanically controlled cavity optomechanical sensing system
• Broadband nanoelectromechanical phase shifting of light on a chip
• Quantum Conductivity for Metal-Insulator-Metal Nanostructures
• A superhigh-frequency optoelectromechanical system based on a slotted photonic crystal cavity
• Design and modeling of an ultra-compact 2x2 nanomechanical plasmonic switch

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Attojoule Optoelectronics for Low-Energy Information Processing and Communications: a Tutorial Review
• Nano-Opto-Electro-Mechanical Systems
• Dynamic metasurface lens based on MEMS Technology
• Single Atom Plasmonic Switch
• Electromechanically Tunable Suspended Optical Nano-antenna
• Helicity sensitive plasmonic teraherts interferometer
• Injection-locked phonon lasing driven by an individual plasmonic metamolecule
• Design and modeling of an ultra-compact 2x2 nanomechanical plasmonic switch
• Optical-Field Driven Charge-Transfer Modulations near Composite Nanostructures
• Diffraction limited focusing and routing of gap plasmons by a metal-dielectric-metal lens
• Small footprint nano-mechanical plasmonic phase modulators