Optical bistability based on an analog of electromagnetically induced transparency in plasmonic waveguide-coupled resonators

We have investigated numerically an optical bistability effect based on an analog of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a nanoscale plasmonic waveguide-coupled resonator system. The system consists of a metal-insulator-metal waveguide side-coupled with a slot cavity and a nanodisk cavity containing Kerr nonlinear material. By finite-difference time-domain simulations, the EIT-like spectral peak has a redshift with an increase of the dielectric constant of the nanodisk cavity. More importantly, we have achieved an optical bistability with threshold intensity about three times lower than that of recent literature [Appl. Opt. 50, 5287 (2011)]. The results show that our plasmonic structure can find more excellent application in highly integrated optical circuits, especially all-optical switching. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America