Ultracompact plasmonic racetrack resonators in metal-insulator-metal waveguides

Among various plasmonic waveguides, the metal-insulator-metal (MIM) type is the most promising for true subwavelength photonic integration. To date, many photonic devices based on MIM waveguides have been investigated, including resonators. However, most of the reported MIM ring resonators suffer from low extinction ratios and the reasons are unexplored in the literature. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of the underlying causes of the low performance of MIM ring resonators, and give the analytical transmission relation for a universal all-pass ring resonator with coupling loss. Based on the analysis we propose plasmonic racetrack resonators in MIM waveguides and show that the performance can be greatly improved. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.