Andrei Andryieuski

Compact dipole nanoantenna coupler to plasmonic slot waveguide.

Optical nanoantennas can be used for coupling radiation to or from waveguides in analogy to micro- and radio-wave systems. In this letter we provide a systematic description of the design approaches for a coupler to a plasmonic slot waveguide in the telecom range around 1.55 µm with realistic excitation from a lensed optical fiber. We show that the best coupling efficiency of 26% can be achieved by utilizing a dipole antenna with side and bottom reflectors, and such coupling efficiency is 185 times larger than for the bare waveguide. The nanoantenna coupler provides a compact interface between an optical fiber and a plasmonic slot waveguide for future optical integrated circuits.

Terahertz field enhancement to the MV/cm regime in a tapered parallel plate waveguide

We investigate field enhancement properties of a tapered parallel plate waveguide for ultrashort terahertz (THz) pulses. We use two independent methods, air biased coherent detection inside the waveguide and free-space electro-optic sampling, respectively, which enables a calibrated, quantitative measurement of the field strength at the output of the waveguide. Field enhancement factors greater than 20 are demonstrated and record-high field strengths of > 1.4 MV/cm are reached. We find an excellent agreement between the two independent methods of field measurement and a numerical 3D full-vectorial time-domain simulations.

Water: Promising Opportunities For Tunable All-dielectric Electromagnetic Metamaterials.

We reveal an outstanding potential of water as an inexpensive, abundant and bio-friendly high-refractive-index material for creating tunable all-dielectric photonic structures and metamaterials. Specifically, we demonstrate thermal, mechanical and gravitational tunability of magnetic and electric resonances in a metamaterial consisting of periodically positioned water-filled reservoirs. The proposed water-based metamaterials can find applications not only as cheap and ecological microwave devices, but also in optical and terahertz metamaterials prototyping and educational lab equipment.

Boosting Local Field Enhancement by on-Chip Nanofocusing and Impedance-Matched Plasmonic Antennas

Strongly confined surface plasmon-polariton modes can be used for efficiently delivering the electromagnetic energy to nanosized volumes by reducing the cross sections of propagating modes far beyond the diffraction limit, that is, by nanofocusing. This process results in significant local-field enhancement that can advantageously be exploited in modern optical nanotechnologies, including signal processing, biochemical sensing, imaging, and spectroscopy. Here, we propose, analyze, and experimentally demonstrate on-chip nanofocusing followed by impedance-matched nanowire antenna excitation in the end-fire geometry at telecom wavelengths. Numerical and experimental evidence of the efficient excitation of dipole and quadrupole (dark) antenna modes are provided, revealing underlying physical mechanisms and analogies with the operation of plane-wave Fabry-Pérot interferometers. The unique combination of efficient nanofocusing and nanoantenna resonant excitation realized in our experiments offers a major boost to the field intensity enhancement up to ∼12000, with the enhanced field being evenly distributed over the gap volume of 30 × 30 × 10 nm(3), and promises thereby a variety of useful on-chip functionalities within sensing, nonlinear spectroscopy and signal processing.

Homogenization of resonant chiral metamaterials

Homogenization of metamaterials is a crucial issue as it allows to describe their optical response in terms of effective wave parameters as, e.g., propagation constants. In this paper we consider the possible homogenization of chiral metamaterials. We show that for meta-atoms of a certain size a critical density exists above which increasing coupling between neighboring meta-atoms prevails a reasonable homogenization. On the contrary, a dilution in excess will induce features reminiscent to photonic crystals likewise prevailing a homogenization. Based on Bloch mode dispersion we introduce an analytical criterion for performing the homogenization and a tool to predict the homogenization limit. We show that strong coupling between meta-atoms of chiral metamaterials may prevent their homogenization at all.

Direct Characterization of Plasmonic Slot Waveguides and Nanocouplers

We demonstrate the use of amplitude- and phase-resolved near-field mapping for direct characterization of plasmonic slot waveguide mode propagation and excitation with nanocouplers in the telecom wavelength range. We measure modes propagation length, effective index and field distribution and directly evaluate the relative coupling efficiencies for various couplers configurations. We report 26- and 15-fold improvements in the coupling efficiency with two serially connected dipole and modified bow-tie antennas, respectively, as compared to that of the short-circuited waveguide termination.

Wave propagation retrieval method for metamaterials: Unambiguous restoration of effective parameters

In this Brief report we propose a direct method of effective-parameters restoration that is based on the wave propagation phenomenon. It is easy in implementation, has no unambiguity in retrieving effective properties and is applicable to thick metamaterial (MTM) slabs. The method is validated on the case studies of fishnet, split cube in carcass, and Jerusalem cross MTMs. The constraints of the method are designated.

Experimental demonstration of water based tunable metasurface

A simple dynamically tunable metasurface (two-dimensional metamaterial) operating at microwave frequencies is developed and experimentally investigated. Conceptually, the simplicity of the approach is granted by reconfigurable properties of unit cells partially filled with distilled water. The transmission spectra of the metasurface for linear and circular polarizations of the incident wave were experimentally measured under the metasurface rotation around a horizontal axis. The changes in the transmission coefficient magnitude up to 8 dB at 1.25 GHz are reported while rotating the metasurface by the 90° angle. The proposed approach manifests the cheap and accessible route for the electromagnetic wave control in the microwave region with the help of metasurfaces.

From surface to volume plasmons in hyperbolic metamaterials: General existence conditions for bulk high-k waves in metal-dielectric and graphene-dielectric multilayers.

We theoretically investigate general existence conditions for broadband bulk large-wavevector (high-k) propagating waves (such as volume plasmon polaritons in hyperbolic metamaterials) in subwavelength periodic multilayer structures. Describing the elementary excitation in the unit cell of the structure by a generalized resonance pole of a reflection coefficient, and using Blochs theorem, we derive analytical expressions for the band of large-wavevector propagating solutions. We apply our formalism to determine the high-k band existence in two important cases: the well-known metal-dielectric, and recently introduced graphene-dielectric stacks. We confirm that short-range surface plasmons in thin metal layers can give rise to hyperbolic metamaterial properties, and demonstrate that long-range surface plasmons cannot. We also show that graphene-dielectric multilayers tend to support high-k waves and explore the range of parameters for which this is possible, confirming the prospects of using graphene for materials with hyperbolic dispersion. The approach is applicable to a large variety of structures, such as continuous or structured microwave, terahertz (THz) and optical metamaterials.

High symmetry versus optical isotropy of a negative-index metamaterial

Optically isotropic metamaterials MMs are required for the implementation of subwavelength imaging systems. At first glance one would expect that their design should be based on unit cells exhibiting a cubic symmetry being the highest crystal symmetry. It is anticipated that this is a sufficient condition since it is usually assumed that light does not resolve the spatial details of MM but experiences the properties of an effective medium, which is then optically isotropic. In this work we challenge this assumption by analyzing the isofrequency surfaces of the dispersion relation of the split cube in carcass negative index MM. We show that this MM is basically optically isotropic but not in the spectral domain where it exhibits negative refraction. The primary goal of this contribution is to introduce a tool that allows to probe a MM against optical isotropy.