Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Optics Express

Abstract

Long propagation waveguides are critical for any photonic-on-chip applications. There has been an extensive investigation in using plasmon polaritons for near-infrared and optical networks, however, for mid- to long-wave IR applications phonon polaritons are required given that plasmonic polaritonic effects are negligible. In recent years, extensive research has been conducted on hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), which has shown h-BN to have naturally occurring subwavelength, volumetrically confined hyperbolic phonon polaritons (HPhPs). This work presents numerical results for both long- and short-range phononic volumetric polariton modes in a slab of h-BN. A hybrid long-range phononic waveguide consisting of two identical dielectric cylinder wires symmetrically placed on each side of the h-BN slab is coupled to the long-range HPhP mode. Based on analytical coupled-mode theory and computational finite element analysis, we have investigated the modal characteristics of the hybrid long-range phonon polaritonic waveguide. Due to the strong coupling between the high index cylindrical-waveguide mode and the HPhPs in the h-BN thin film, subwavelength confinement can be achieved (modal area ranging from 10−2 λo 2 to 10−1 λo 2 ) while enabling long propagation distances (7 λ0 -370 λ0 ). © 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement.

First Page

26272

DOI

10.1364/OE.26.026272

Publication Date

2018

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