Rainbow trapping based on long-range plasmonic Bragg gratings at telecom frequencies

The group velocity of long-range surface plasmon polaritons (LRSPPs) in a wide frequency bandwidth at infrared frequencies is significantly reduced by dielectric gratings of graded thickness on both sides of a thin metal film. This structure can reduce the propagation loss of slow surface plasmons in “rainbow trapping" systems based on plasmonic Bragg gratings. Compared with dielectric gratings of graded thickness on a single side of a metal film, the proposed structure is able to guide slow light with a much longer propagation distance for the same group index factor. Finite-difference time-domain simulation results show that slow LRSPPs with the group velocity of c/14.5 and the propagation distance of 10.4 μm are achieved in dielectric gratings of uniform thickness on both sides of a thin metal film at 1.62 μm.