Hybridization of photon-plasmon modes in metal-coated microtubular cavities

TL;DR

This paper investigates how photon and plasmon modes hybridize in metal-coated microtubular cavities, revealing the physical mechanisms and potential for enhanced light-matter interactions and sensing.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the hybridization mechanism in opto-plasmonic microtubular cavities, demonstrating how structural changes affect mode coupling strength.

Findings

Demonstrated weak, moderate, and strong hybridization regimes

Applied an effective potential approach to explain hybridization

Identified physical mechanisms for hybrid mode generation

Abstract

The coupling of resonant light and surface plasmons in metal layer coated optical microcavities results in the formation of hybrid photon-plasmon modes. Here, we comprehensively investigate the hybridization mechanism of photon-plasmon modes based on opto-plasmonic microtubular cavities. By changing the cavity structure and the metal layer thickness, weakly, moderately and strongly hybridized resonant modes are demonstrated depending on the photon-plasmon coupling strength. An effective potential approach is applied to illustrate the hybridization of photon-plasmon modes relying on the competition between light confinement by the cavity wall and the potential barrier introduced by the metal layer. Our work reveals the basic physical mechanisms for the generation of hybrid modes in metal-coated whispering-gallery-mode microcavities, and is of importance for the study of enhanced light-matter interactions and potential sensing applications.