title: Position-sensitive spectral splitting with a plasmonic nanowire on silicon chip.
abstract: On-chip nanophotonics serves as the foundation for the new generation of information technology, but it is challenged by the diffraction limit of light. With the capabilities of confining light into (deep) subwavelength volumes, plasmonics makes it possible to dramatically miniaturize optical devices so as to integrate them into silicon chips. Here we demonstrate that by cascading nano-corrugation gratings with different periodicities on silver nanowires atop silicon, different colors can be spatially separated and chronologically released at different grating junctions. The released light frequency depends on the grating arrangement and corrugation periodicities. Hence the nanowire acts as a spectral splitter for sorting/demultiplexing photons at different nano-scale positions with a ten-femtosecond-level interval. Such nanowires can be constructed further into compact 2D networks or circuits. We believe that this study provides a new and promising approach for realizing spatiotemporal-sensitive spectral splitting and optical signal processing on nanoscales, and for general integration of nanophotonics with microelectronics.
authors.affiliation: 1] National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures and Department of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China [2] Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Qing
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Di-Hu
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Ru-Wen
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.forename: Ren-Hao
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.forename: Nicholas X
authors.initials: NX
authors.lastname: Fang
authors.forename: Qian-Jin
authors.initials: QJ
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Xian-Rong
authors.initials: XR
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Mu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wang