Tunable extraordinary optical transmission for integrated photonics

The propagation of light through opaque materials, served by periodic arrays of subwavelength holes, has revolutionized imaging and sensor technology with a breakthrough of extraordinary optical transmission (EOT). The enhanced optical transmission assisted by surface plasmon resonances (SPR) has become the most ingenious phenomenon in the field of light-matter interaction. Active tuning of SPR presents a new and simple way to control spectral features of the EOT signal (without the need to change the geometrical structure of the device). This provides a new possibility to integrate an active EOT device with tunable operational frequencies on a single chip of photonic integrated circuits (PIC)- a new scalable instrument in the optoelectronic industry, and quantum technology for improving subwavelength optical imaging and biomedical sensing. In this review, we discuss the fundamentals of EOT, the role of SPR, and how the active quantum plasmonic control of the EOT device makes it a feasible on-chip electro-optic programmable element for integrated photonics.