Spatial Mode Selective Waveguide with Hyperbolic Cladding

TL;DR

This paper introduces a waveguide design using hyperbolic metamaterials as cladding, enabling support for only higher order modes with lower loss, which could benefit optical communication and integrated photonics.

Contribution

It demonstrates a novel waveguide structure with hyperbolic cladding that selectively supports higher order modes and exhibits lower loss compared to traditional metal-insulator-metal waveguides.

Findings

Supports only higher order modes with hyperbolic cladding

Lower loss in HMM-Insulator-HMM waveguide compared to MIM

Potential applications in optical communication and photonics

Abstract

Hyperbolic Meta-Materials~(HMMs) are anisotropic materials with permittivity tensor that has both positive and negative eigenvalues. Here we report that by using a type II HMM as cladding material, a waveguide which only supports higher order modes can be achieved, while the lower order modes become leaky and are absorbed in the HMM cladding. This counter intuitive property can lead to novel application in optical communication and photonic integrated circuit. The loss in our HMM-Insulator-HMM~(HIH) waveguide is smaller than that of similar guided mode in a Metal-Insulator-Metal~(MIM) waveguide.