A waveguide includes a core and a cladding. The core has an inlet on which light is incident. The core includes a front portion and a rear portion located between the front portion and the inlet. The front portion and the rear portion each have a thickness that is a dimension in a first direction and a width that is a dimension in a second direction. The first direction is orthogonal to a propagation direction of the light. The second direction is orthogonal to the propagation direction of the light and the first direction. The thickness of the front portion decreases with increasing distance from the inlet.

Plasmonic optical fibers, plasmonic optical sensors and methods of manufacturing the same. A fiber core conveys an optical signal therewithin and provides a plasmonic sensing area exposed to a fluid. The plasmonic sensing area is formed only on a section of an external surface of the fiber core. The plasmonic sensing area provides an interface within the section of the external surface for the conveyed signal to at least partially exit the fiber core and cause a modified optical signal to be conveyed in the fiber core. An optical signal generator may provide the optical signal to the plasmonic optical fiber, an optical signal receiver may discriminate the conveyed optical signal from the modified optical signal and a processor module may analyze the modified optical signal and identifies physical characteristics of the fluid present at the sensing area.

The present disclosure relates to a substrate unit of a nanostructure assembly type, an optical image apparatus including the same, and a controlling method thereof, and the substrate unit of the nanostructure assembly type according to an exemplary embodiment includes: a lower substrate; an upper substrate separated from the lower substrate, an observation object being able to be positioned at the upper substrate; and at least one metal nanostructure positioned on the lower substrate, wherein the at least one metal nanostructure is capable of being assembled on the lower substrate or separated from the lower substrate.

An apparatus is includes a near field transducer positioned adjacent a media-facing surface and at the end of a waveguide having at least one core layer and a cladding layer. The apparatus also includes at least one optical reflector positioned adjacent opposing cross-track edges of the near field transducer and/or adjacent a down-track side of the near-field transducer.

Optics collection and detection systems are provided for measuring optical signals from an array of optical sources over time. Methods of using the optics collection and detection systems are also described.

Devices and methods are provided for controlling the propagation of electromagnetic radiation on conductive surfaces via the presence of coupled subwavelength conductor-dielectric unit plasmonic resonators. In some embodiments, the dimensions of the unit plasmonic resonators are selected to produce modal overlap and coupling between surface plasmons of adjacent conductive surfaces. The properties of the unit plasmonic resonators may be spatially graded to produce the slowing down and/or trapping of electromagnetic waves. Methods are provided for calculating resonant modes of structures that involve intra-resonator plasmonic coupling. Various example implementations of such devices and structures are provided.

The Hybrid Photonic Plasmonic Interconnect (HyPPI) combines both low loss photonic signal propagation and passive routing with ultra-compact plasmonic devices. These optical interconnects therefore uniquely combine fast operational data-bandwidths (in hundreds of Gbps) for light manipulation with low optical attenuation losses by hybridizing low loss photonics with strong light-matter-interaction plasmonics to create, modulate, switch and detect light efficiently at the same time. Initial implementations were considered for on-chip photonic integration, but also promising for free space or fiber-based systems. In general two technical options exist, which distinguished by the method the electric-optic conversion is executed: the extrinsic modulation method consists of an continuous wave source such as an LED or laser operating at steady power output, and signal encoding is done via an electro-optic modulator downstream of the source in the interconnect. In contrast, in the intrinsic method, the optical source is directly amplitude modulated.

A photonic radiator used for a photonic phased array antenna includes a waveguide including a waveguide clad and a waveguide core that uses semiconductor materials, and a grating that radiates an output light wave to a space by using scattering of an input light wave incident in a direction of the waveguide.

The present disclosure is directed to systems for tuning nanocube plasmonic resonators and methods for forming tunable plasmonic resonators. A tunable plasmonic resonator system can include a substrate and a nanostructure positioned on a surface of the substrate. The substrate can include a semiconductor material having a carrier density distribution. A junction can be formed between the nanostructure and the substrate forming a Schottky junction. Changing the carrier density distribution of the semiconductor material can change a plasmonic response of the plasmonic resonator.

An embodiment sensor includes a hybrid waveguide. The hybrid waveguide includes a first dielectric optical waveguide lying on and in contact with a dielectric support layer; a first surface waveguide optically coupled to the first dielectric optical waveguide, parallel to the first dielectric optical waveguide, and lying on the dielectric support layer. The first surface waveguide has a lateral surface configured to guide a surface mode. The hybrid waveguide includes a cavity intended to be filled with a dielectric fluid, separating laterally the first dielectric optical waveguide from the lateral surface of the first surface waveguide.