We have analyzed a hybrid photonic-plasmonic crystal nanocavity consisting of a silicon grating nanowire adjacent to a metal surface with a gain gap between. The hybrid plasmonic cavity modes are highly confined in the gap due to the coupling of photonic crystal cavity modes and surface plasmonic gap modes. Using the finite-element method, we numerically solve guided modes of the hybrid plasmonic waveguide at a wavelength of 1.55 μm. The modal characteristics such as waveguide confinement factors and modal losses of the fundamental hybrid plasmonic modes are explored as a function of the groove depth at various gap heights. After that, we show the band structure of the hybrid crystal modes, corresponding to a wide band gap of 17.8 THz. To effectively trap the optical modes, we introduce a single defect into the hybrid crystal. At a deep sub-wavelength defect length as small as 180 nm, the resonant mode exhibits a high quality factor of 566.5 and an ultrasmall mode volume of 0.00186 (λ/n) 3 at the resonance wavelength of 1.55 μm. In comparison to the conventional photonic crystal nanowire cavity in the absence of metal surface, the figure of merit Q/Vm is enormously enhanced around 15 times. The proposed nanocavities open up the opportunities for various applications with strong light-matter interaction such as nanolasers and biosensors.
We analyze a plasmonic gap-mode Fabry-Perot nanocavity containing a metallic nanowire. The proper choice of the cladding layer brings about a decent confinement inside the active region for the fundamental and first-order plasmonic gap modes. We numerically extract the reflectivity of the fundamental and first-order mode and obtain the optical field inside the cavity. We also study the dependence of the reflectivity on the thickness of Ag reflectors and show that a decent reflectivity above 90 % is achievable. For such cavities with a cavity length approaching 1.5 μm, a quality factor near 150 and threshold gain lower than 1500 cm−1 are achievable.
We demonstrate that the photonic band gaps in silicon slab waveguides are generated through the acousto-optic (AO) interaction. By exciting the acoustic eigenmodes of slab waveguides, the refractive indices and interfaces of silicon slab can be modulated periodically to perturb the guided optical waves and open up the photonic band gaps. We find that the occurrence of the strong forbidden effect to form the band gaps is due to nonlinear interactions between the guided optical and acoustic modes. Using the finite-element method, we calculate the photonic band structures of TE waves and TM waves under the perturbation of the lowest three acoustic eigenmodes, respectively. The results show that the fundamental symmetric acoustic slab mode can create Bragg photonic band gaps of tunable width. With generating acoustic-wave amplitude of 1.0 % of the slab thickness, photonic band gaps from 61.58 – 61.92 THz for TE and 89.10 – 89.24 THz for TM are demonstrated. Applications include the design of optomechanical and AO devices and micro and nanolasers.
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