Coherent control of low loss surface polaritons

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method for fast all-optical control of surface polaritons using an EIT medium at material interfaces, enabling tight confinement and extreme slowing while minimizing losses.

Contribution

It demonstrates a novel approach combining EIT with interface engineering to achieve low-loss, highly confined, and slow surface polaritons in both TE and TM modes.

Findings

EIT enables longitudinal compression and slow group velocity of SPs.

Matching properties of materials at the interface enhances transverse confinement.

The method achieves low-loss, tightly confined, and slow SPs in both polarizations.

Abstract

We propose fast all-optical control of surface polaritons (SPs) by placing an electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) medium at an interface between two materials. EIT provides longitudinal compression and a slow group velocity while matching properties of the two materials at the interface provides strong transverse confinement. In particular we show that an EIT medium near the interface between a dielectric and a negative-index metamaterial can establish tight longitudinal and transverse confinement plus extreme slowing of SPs, in both transverse electric and transverse magnetic polarizations, while simultaneously avoiding losses.