End-fire coupling efficiencies of surface plasmons for silver, gold, and plasmonic nitride compounds
Date
2016
Authors
Fisher, Caitlin
Botten, Lindsay C.
Poulto, Christopher G.
McPhedran, Ross C.
de Sterke, C. Martijn
Journal Title
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Volume Title
Publisher
Optical Society of America
Abstract
We present a semi-analytical study exploring the end-fire coupling of a free-space incident beam into a surface
plasmon propagating along the interface of a dielectric and a lossy plasmonic material. Using a projection
method that calculates the surface plasmon coupling efficiencies for this configuration, we explain in detail
how the challenges of including loss, and thus having complex permittivities, have been overcome. A comparison
is made of the coupling efficiencies of four plasmonic materials: Ag, Au, TiN, and ZrN. We show that TiN
has a consistently higher coupling efficiency than the other three materials for wavelengths between 0.5 and
2.0 μm. All four materials are capable of providing end-fire coupling efficiencies above 87% within this
wavelength range.
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Source
Journal of the Optical Society of America B
Type
Journal article