Dresden 2020 – scientific programme
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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik
O 65: Plasmonics and Nanooptics IV: Waveguides and Antennas
O 65.2: Talk
Wednesday, March 18, 2020, 10:45–11:00, WIL A317
Surface Polariton-Like s-Polarized Waveguide Modes in Switchable Dielectric Thin-Films on Polar Crystals — •Nikolai Christian Passler1, Andreas Heßler2, Matthias Wuttig2, Thomas Taubner2, and Alexander Paarmann1 — 1Fritz-Haber-Institute of the MPG — 2RWTH Aachen University
Surface phonon polaritons (SPhP) and surface plasmon polaritons are fundamental building blocks of nanophotonics. These modes are unmatched in field enhancement and spatial confinement, and all-optical control is feasible with phase-change materials such as Ge3Sb2Te6 (GST). However, the excitation of surface polaritons is limited to p-polarization. On the contrary, waveguide modes in high-permittivity films can couple to both p- and s-polarized light, and in thin films, their confinement can become comparable to surface polaritons.
For a thin GST film on SiC, we here [1] demonstrate that the s-polarized waveguide mode features a similar dispersion, confinement, and electric field enhancement as the index-shifted SPhP of SiC. Experimentally, employing the Otto geometry for prism coupling [2], we show that switching the GST film between its amorphous and crystalline phase grants non-volatile control over the SPhP and the s-polarized waveguide mode dispersions. Thus, polariton-like waveguide modes in dielectric thin films on polar crystal substrates provide a promising additional building block for actively tunable, low-loss, and omni-polarized nanophotonic applications.
[1] N. C. Passler et al., Adv. Opt. Mater., 1901056 (2019)
[2] N. C. Passler et al., ACS Photonics 4, 1048 (2017)