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We present a plasmonic all-optical switch based on Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) with local nonlinearity. The design of the miniaturized all-optical switch is possible by employing surface-plasmon polaritons (SPPs) that confine the energy of electromagnetic (EM) waves at sub-wavelength scale. The coupling between sub-wavelength plasmonic waveguides in MZI and a control beam generates 'ON' and 'OFF' states at the switch and switching between 'ON' and 'OFF' states happens when the control beam is turned on or off. The waveguides cladding in the switch structure is made of lossy media including metamaterials with positive and negative EM susceptibilities and metals; the core consists of nonlinear and dielectric media. Employing materials with negative EM susceptibilities in the switch structure facilitates the propagation of both transverse electric and transverse magnetic SPPs along the waveguides. Our all-optical switch design enables multi-frequency switching with low-intensity control field. Ascertaining the capabilities of multi-frequency plasmonic all-optical switches facilities their applications in miniaturized photonic circuits and in biosensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We characterize the behavior of modes propagating along a hollow elliptical waveguide with lossy metamaterial cladding. The proposed metamaterial-dielectric elliptical waveguide supports surface-plasmon polariton (SPP) and hybrid ordinary-SPP modes in the operating frequency ranges. Previous studies on metamaterial-dielectric elliptical waveguides either ignore the effect of energy loss on the modes characteristics or employ approximate approaches to characterize modes behavior. Although some previous works include energy loss, they do not specify SPPs propagation versus hybrid-ordinary SPPs propagation in the operating frequency ranges. Here, we consider energy loss in the waveguide to eliminate errors resulting from neglecting the loss. Our waveguide structure facilitates SPP and hybrid ordinary-SPP modes propagation along the waveguide, has better energy confinement, and higher propagation length than previous results in the literature. In the elliptical waveguide, the propagation coefficient changes by changing the waveguide eccentricity; therefore, the elliptical nature of the studied waveguide facilitates its applications in pressure optical sensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We employ the properties of metamaterials to tailor the modes of metamaterial-dielectric waveguides operating at optical frequencies. We survey the effects of three-dimensional isotropic metamaterial structural parameters on the refractive index of metamaterials and on the hybrid modes in slab metamaterial-dielectric waveguides. Hybrid modes refer to hybrid ordinary-surface plasmon polariton modes in the waveguide structures. We investigate how robust metamaterials are to fluctuations in their structural parameters; specifically, we examine the effects of Gaussian errors on the metamaterials electromagnetic behavior. Our survey enables us to determine the allowable fluctuation limits and from this to identify appropriate unit-cell structure for further applications of metamaterials in waveguide technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]