Sensitivity enhanced all-optical switching using prism-grating coupled surface plasmon modes

A sensitivity enhanced all-optical-switch design using prism-sinusoidal grating coupled surface plasmon modes is demonstrated numerically. Owing to the simultaneous excitation of surface plasmons for the pump and signal at the interface between a nonlinear waveguide layer and a metal layer, a sensitivity enhanced bistability effect in the structure can be obtained. The nonlinear refractive index of the waveguide layer experiences an abrupt change of the local pump field owing to this bistability effect. Such a characteristic greatly improves the performance of optical switch by reducing the threshold pump intensity. An all-optical-switch design with a pump threshold as low as 0.9 GW/cm(2) is presented. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.