Ultrahigh contrast one-way optical transmission through a subwavelength slit

Abstract

We computationally demonstrate one-way optical transmission characteristics of a subwavelength slit. We comparatively study the effect in single layer and double layer metallic corrugations. We also investigate the effect of a dielectric spacer layer between double corrugations to control the volumetric coupling of plasmon and optical modes. We computationally show unidirectional transmission behavior with an ultrahigh contrast ratio of 53.4 dB at λ = 1.56 μm. Volumetric coupling efficiency through the nanoslit strongly depends on the efficient excitation of both the surface plasmon resonance and metal–insulator–metal waveguide modes. We show that the behavior is tunable in a wide spectral range.