Fabrication and optical characterization of long-range surface-plasmon-polariton waveguides in the NIR

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the propagation of long-range surface plasmon-polaritons in a gold stripe waveguide at 780 nm, showing low loss and potential for quantum emitter coupling in integrated plasmonic devices.

Contribution

It presents the fabrication and optical characterization of a novel long-range plasmonic waveguide supporting symmetric and anti-symmetric modes with measured low propagation loss.

Findings

Measured propagation loss of 6.12 dB/mm for the fundamental mode.

Good agreement between experimental results and numerical simulations.

Potential application in coupling quantum emitters to plasmonic waveguides.

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate the propagation of long-range surface plasmon-polaritons in a nobel metal stripe waveguide at an optical wavelength of 780 nm. To minimize propagation damping the lithographically structured waveguide is produced from a thin gold stripe embedded in a dielectric polymer. Our waveguide geometry supports a symmetric fundamental and anti-symmetric first order mode. For the fundamental mode we measure a propagation loss of $(6.12^{+0.66} _{-0.54})$ dB/mm, in good agreement with numerical simulations using a vectorial eigenmode solver. Our results are a promising starting point for coupling fluorescence of individual solid state quantum emitters to integrated plasmonic waveguide structures.