Analytical and numerical modeling of plasmonic components for nanophotonic applications

Light, as an information carrier, is blessed with a number of different properties that make it a strong contender for state-of-the-art communication and computing systems. Despite its capabilities of transmitting ultrahigh bandwidth data with maximum immunity to interference and minimal power budget, the smallest possible confinement of an optical beam is fundamentally limited by the diffraction limit. The alluring topic of optics at nanoscale is fueled by this challenge of breaking the diffraction barrier, to manipulate light at dimensions far below the optical wavelengths. Over the past few decades, surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) that reside in the interfaces of metallic structures have attracted considerable amount of attention in the field of nanoscale photonics. Owing to its subwavelength characteristic lateral confinement and the quasi-optical nature, SPP manifests itself as an ideal candidate for future integrated optics applications. Today, a plethora of devices based on SPPs have been numerically simulated and experimentally realized using sophisticated computational techniques and cutting-edge nanofabrication facilities. This marks the dawn of a relatively new branch of optics, called plasmonics, which studies the manipulation of strongly localized SPPs using nano-metallic structures. With the development of miniaturized plasmonic waveguides, which can simultaneously carry SPPs and electrons, hybrid optoelectronics chip of ultrahigh packing density and enormous bandwidth has now become an appealing reality. This research focuses on the modeling of transmission characteristics of plasmonic-waveguide-based components using both numerical and analytical techniques.