Deeply sub-wavelength all-dielectric waveguide design and method for making the same

Abstract

Accelerating photonic and opto-electronic technologies requires breaking current limits of modern chip-scale photonic devices. While electronics and computer technologies have benefited from 'Moore's Law' scaling, photonic technologies are conventionally limited in scale by the wavelength of light. Recent sub-wavelength optical devices use nanostructures and plasmonic devices but still face fundamental performance limitations arising from metal-induced optical losses and resonance-induced narrow optical bandwidths. The present disclosure instead confines and guides light at deeply sub-wavelength dimensions while preserving low-loss and broadband operation. The wave nature of light is used while employing metal-free (all-dielectric) nanostructure geometries which effectively 'pinch' light into ultra-small active volumes, for potentially about 100-1000× reduction in energy consumption of active photonic components such as phase-shifters. The present disclosure could make possible all-optical and quantum computing devices which require extreme optical confinement to achieve efficient light-matter interactions.