Tunable Hybrid Gap Surface Plasmon Polariton Waveguides with Ultralow Loss Deep-Subwavelength Propagation

Exploring hybrid gap surface plasmon polariton waveguides (HGSPPWs) is an important milestone in developing the next-generation, nanoscale integrated photonic circuit technology. To advance their potential applications, HGSPPWs are required to have tunable capability, highly reliable, simple fabrication process, and feasible integration. In this paper, we propose two tunable HGSPPWs fulfilling the requirements. The proposed HGSPPWs consist of a metallic wedge laterally coupled with a dielectric waveguide. The modal characteristics of HGSPPWs are investigated at the optical telecommunication wavelength, which shows the modal characteristics could be effectively controlled by tuning the key geometry parameters and structure of HGSPPWs. The propagation length could achieve the centimeter scale while maintaining the propagation mode size at the deep-subwavelength scale (~ λ²/10⁵). The studies on fabrication tolerance and waveguide crosstalk show their robust property for practical implementations. The effective tunable mechanism is also proposed and studied, which shows remarkable feasibility to realize multifunctional plasmon-based photonic components. Compared with the conventional HGSPPWs, the proposed HGSPPWs exhibit superior features in ultralow loss deep-subwavelength light guiding, are highly reliable, and are easy to integrate.