We report an on-chip solid-state Mach-Zehnder interferometer operating on two-dimensional (2D) plasmonic waves at microwave frequencies. Two plasmonic paths are defined with GaAs/AlGaAs 2D electron gas 80 nm below a metallic gate. The gated 2D plasmonic waves achieve a velocity of ~c/300 (c: free-space light speed). Due to this ultra-subwavelength confinement, the resolution of the 2D plasmonic interferometer is two orders of magnitude higher than that of its electromagnetic counterpart at a given frequency. This GHz proof-of-concept at cryogenic temperatures can be scaled to the THz IR range for room temperature operation, while maintaining the benefits of the ultra-subwavelength confinement.
@article{arxiv.1212.4170,
title = {Two-Path Solid-State Interferometry Using Ultra-Subwavelength 2D Plasmonic Waves},
author = {Kitty Y. M. Yeung and Hosang Yoon and William Andress and Ken West and Loren Pfeiffer and Donhee Ham},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1212.4170},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
18 pages, 11 figures. The article has been submitted to Applied Physics Letters. After it is published, it will be found at http://apl.aip.org/