Metal-filled Photonic Crystal Fibers: Plasmonics and Polarizers

Patrick Uebel, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Erlangen

When the air holes of Photonic Crystal Fibers (PCF) are filled with metals, the optical properties of the waveguide change very strongly. The hybrid structures show pronounced plasmonic resonances while the bulk optical properties of the metal lead to in-fiber polarization effects. In this talk I give a short introduction to fiber optics, including modal propagation in step-index-fibers, PCF and plasmonic nanowire waveguides. I discuss the fabrication of metal-filled optical fibers and review the basic theory of surface plasmon polaritons coupled to dielectric waveguides. I present our most recent experimental results, including:

• Generation of octave-spanning, azimuthal polarized supercontinuum (P. Uebel et al. New J. Phys. 2011 (13), 063016, video abstract online)
• Polarization-resolved near-field mapping using SNOM of a coupled plasmonic waveguide array (P. Uebel et al. CLEO US 2012, CF2M.2)
• Gold nanotips as plasmonic hot spot generators
• Plasmonic hybridization of nanowire waveguides (H. Lee et al. Opt. Lett. 2012, submitted) In particular, I will focus on the SNOM experiment which was done using a customized device from WITec ALPHA300 S.

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