TY - JOUR
T1 - Multiple trains of same-color surface plasmon-polaritons guided by the planar interface of a metal and a sculptured nematic thin film
AU - Motyka, Michael A.
AU - Lakhtakia, Akhlesh
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank two anonymous reviewers for insightful comments and references to relevant literature on nematic liquid crystals. This work was supported by the Charles Godfrey Binder Endowment in the College of Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University.
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - A sculptured nematic thin film (SNTF) is an assembly of parallel nanowires that are shaped in a fixed plane orthogonal to the substrate on which the film is deposited. The absorbance, reflectance, and transmittance of a linearly polarized, obliquely incident plane wave were calculated for a planar metal/SNTF interface in the Kretschmann configuration, the wave vector of the plane wave lying wholly in the morphologically significant plane of the SNTF. The permittivity profile of the chosen SNTF was supposed to have been sculptured during physical vapor deposition by varying the vapor incidence angle sinusoidally about a mean value. Calculations revealed that (i) multiple surface-plasmon-polariton (SPP) trains of the same color can be independently guided by the metal/SNTF interface, (ii) not all SPP trains have to be co-propagating, and (iii) not all SPP trains have to be of the same linear polarization state. As different SPP trains move with different speeds, guided by the interface, exciting prospects emerge for error-free sensing and plasmonics-based communication.
AB - A sculptured nematic thin film (SNTF) is an assembly of parallel nanowires that are shaped in a fixed plane orthogonal to the substrate on which the film is deposited. The absorbance, reflectance, and transmittance of a linearly polarized, obliquely incident plane wave were calculated for a planar metal/SNTF interface in the Kretschmann configuration, the wave vector of the plane wave lying wholly in the morphologically significant plane of the SNTF. The permittivity profile of the chosen SNTF was supposed to have been sculptured during physical vapor deposition by varying the vapor incidence angle sinusoidally about a mean value. Calculations revealed that (i) multiple surface-plasmon-polariton (SPP) trains of the same color can be independently guided by the metal/SNTF interface, (ii) not all SPP trains have to be co-propagating, and (iii) not all SPP trains have to be of the same linear polarization state. As different SPP trains move with different speeds, guided by the interface, exciting prospects emerge for error-free sensing and plasmonics-based communication.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=67849106511&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=67849106511&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1117/1.3033757
DO - 10.1117/1.3033757
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:67849106511
SN - 1934-2608
VL - 2
JO - Journal of Nanophotonics
JF - Journal of Nanophotonics
IS - 1
M1 - 21910
ER -