Optics Communications 294 (2013) 368–371

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Optics Communications
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/optcom

Research on transmission characteristics of aperture-coupled square-ring

resonator based filter
Xiao Peng a, Hongjian Li a,b,*, Caini Wu a, Guangtao Cao b, Zhimin Liu a
a
College of Physics and Electronics, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
b
College of Materials Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this study, a nanometric surface plasmon polariton (SPP) filter based on an aperture-coupled square-
Received 26 July 2012 ring resonator is presented and the transmission characteristics of the SPP filter are analyzed in detail by
Received in revised form using the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. Results show that lifting of degeneracy exists in
23 November 2012
both even-modes and odd-modes for the regular side-coupled square-ring resonator. By introducing the
Accepted 8 December 2012
aperture between the ring and bus waveguide, semi-integer resonance modes with high drop efficiency
Available online 8 January 2013
emerge in the optical transmission spectrum. Further simulation results show that semi-integer modes
Keywords: can be efficiently modified and linearly tuned by adjusting the parameters of the resonators such as side
Aperture-coupled square-ring resonator length of the ring, the width of the aperture and the medium inside the aperture. The simple band-stop
Transmission resonance
SPP filter is very promising for high-density SPP waveguide integrations.
Semi-integer resonance modes
& 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction In this paper, we will focus on the resonance modes of the

regular side-coupled square-ring resonator (RSSR) based filter and
Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SPPs), which are electromagnetic aperture-coupled square-ring resonator (ASR) based filter, which
waves propagating along the metal–dielectric interface with an are presented and analyzed in detail by the finite difference time
exponentially decaying field in both sides, have been considered domain (FDTD) method. First, the transmission spectrum of the
as energy and information carriers to overcome the diffraction limit regular side-coupled square-ring resonator (RSSR) based filter is
of light in conventional optics, making these structures a prime investigated. And lifting of degeneracy in both even-modes and
candidate for miniaturized photonic integrated circuits [1–3]. odd-modes is observed, However, in [20], only even-modes
In recent years, various SPPs based devices have been numerically witness lifting of degeneracy. Second, semi-integer resonance
investigated or experimentally demonstrated, such as bends [4], modes are observed and verified for the aperture-coupled
splitters [5], Mach–Zehnder interferometers [6], Y-shaped combi- square-ring resonator (ASR) based filter in our simulation, which
ners [7], Bragg grating [8,9], side coupled Fabry–Perot cavity [10,11], has not been declared in Ref. [14], and these semi-integer modes
tooth-shaped waveguide filters [12,13]. are different from the ones in Ref. [20]. Additionally, in previous
Recently, Hosseini and Massoud [14] proposed a side-coupled works, by varying the outer dimensions of the structure, i.e. side
rectangular ring resonator based filter and an aperture-coupled length of the ring, tunable filters were achieved. Here, we also
rectangular ring resonator based filter, but the latter one is not modify the spectrum by changing the width of the aperture and
analyzed and elucidated in detail. After that, various ring resona- the medium inside it without enlarging or minimize the outer
tors based filter are proposed and numerically investigated parameter of the resonator. This new characteristic is beneficial in
[15,16]. Such as side-coupled and end-coupled circular ring the case of integrated circuits.
resonator [15,16], end-coupled rectangular ring resonator [17].
Also, side-coupled and end-coupled disk resonators [18,19] were
proposed and investigated. These resonators are mainly integer
2. Model and method
modes resonators with either band-stop or band-pass character-
istics. More recently, Iman [20] proposed a new complementary
The finite difference time-domain (FDTD) method with the
split-ring resonator which has non-integer modes.
perfectly matched layer (PML) boundary conditions is used to
numerically explore characteristics of the RSSR and ASR filter. In
n
Corresponding author at: Central South University, College of Physics and
the simulations, the structure in the z direction is considered to be
Electronics, Lusan Lu 8#, Changsha, Hunan 410083, China. infinite (2D). The green and white areas are silver and air,
E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Li). respectively. The pink areas can be air or other dielectric medium.

0030-4018/$ - see front matter & 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.optcom.2012.12.026
 X. Peng et al. / Optics Communications 294 (2013) 368–371 369

The propagation constant b in the waveguide is determined by

the dispersion relation. The dispersion relation of the fundamen-
tal TM mode in a MIM waveguide is given by [12]
 
ik
ed kz2 þ em kz1 coth  z1 w ¼ 0 ð1Þ
2

and kz1 and kz2 are

2 2 2 2 2 2
kz1 ¼ ed k0 b ,kz2 ¼ em k0 b ð2Þ

where ed, em and k0 ¼ 2p/l are the dielectric constants of the

insulator (air) and the metal (silver), and the free-space wave
vector, respectively. The frequency-dependent complex relative
permittivity of silver is characterized by the Drude model: Fig. 2. The transmission spectrum of the regular side-coupled square-ring

resonator (RSSR) based filter (Lx¼ Ly¼ 225 nm). The magnetic distributions are
em ðoÞ ¼ e1 o2p = o2 þ iog ð3Þ shown as insets.

where op ¼1.38  1016 Hz is the bulk plasma frequency which

represents the natural frequency of the oscillations of free con-
duction electrons, g ¼2.73  1013 Hz is the damping frequency of
the oscillations, o is the angular frequency of the incident
electromagnetic radiation and eN stands for the dielectric con-
stant at infinite angular frequency with a value of 3.7.
The main structural parameters of the optical filter are the side
length of the rectangular MIM ring resonator in the x direction
(Lx) and y direction (Ly), the width of the MIM bus waveguide
(W1), the width of the square MIM ring resonator (W2), the width
of the aperture (W3) and the barrier thickness of the coupling
region between the MIM bus waveguide and the square MIM ring
resonator (g). Two power monitors Pin and Pout are set to
calculate the incident power of the transmitted power, and
transmittance of the filter is defined as T¼Pout/Pin. It is important
to point out that, in all cases for the whole paper, the width of the
waveguides W1 and W2 is set to be 50 nm to ensure that only the Fig. 3. The transmission spectra of ASR based filter and RSSR based filter with
fundamental TM mode is supported. Coupling thickness g ¼25 nm Lx¼ 300 nm.

also keeps invariant in the whole paper.

it is observed that when Lx¼Ly¼ 225 nm, both odd-modes and

even-modes exhibit split. The total MIM waveguide length in the
3. Simulation results and discussion
square-ring cavity (cavity length) in this case can be calculated by
L¼2(LxþLy) ¼900 nm. The resonance condition for the rectangu-
3.1. RSSR filter
lar ring cavity is [14]


The simulated transmission spectrum of the regular side- L ¼ N lspp ¼ N lr =Re nef f Þ, ðN ¼ 1,2,3,. . .Þ ð4Þ
coupled square-ring resonator (RSSR) based filter (Lx¼Ly
where N, an integer, is the mode number. And it can be seen from
¼225 nm) is shown in Fig. 2 and the magnetic-field distributions
Fig. 2, the wavelength of simulation results is consistent with the
at the resonance wavelengths are shown as insets in Fig. 2. Here
resonance condition on the whole, although the effective refrac-
we have studied different values for Lx¼Ly. For others values, the
tive index neff as a function of wavelength should be considered
splits may occur either at the even-modes or the odd-modes. But
according to the dispersion relation [12]. For lr ¼581 nm and
lr ¼ 646 nm, which poses four magnetic antinodes at the faces and
corners, are denoted by TM2f and TM2c, respectively. For
lr ¼ 1157 nm and lr ¼1199 nm, which poses two magnetic anti-
nodes, are denoted by TM1s (symmetric) and TM1a (asymmetric)
[20].
The possible differences in the transmission spectra between
the circular ring and rectangular ring are mainly attributed to the
role of the corners of a rectangular ring structure [14,21]. The
corners of the square-ring can be treated as outward perturba-
tions of the circular structure. The outward perturbation will
decrease (increase) the resonance frequency if it is created at the
position of a large magnetic (electric) field [20]. The corner-modes
TM2c (at lr ¼646 nm) and TM1a (at lr ¼1199 nm) which have
longer wavelength than that of TM2f and TM1s can be easily
Fig. 1. (a) The structure of the regular side-coupled square-ring resonator (RSSR) explained. It should be emphasized that, in Fig. 2, the odd-modes
based filter which is composed of an MIM bus waveguide and a MIM square-ring TM1 split into TM1s (at lr ¼1157 nm) and TM1a (lr ¼ 1199 nm),
resonator. (b) The schematic of the aperture-coupled square-ring resonator (ASR)
based filter, where a aperture is placed between the ring and the bus waveguide.
which is mentioned but not observed in Ref. [20]. In this study,
(For interpretation of the references to color in this figure caption, the reader is lifting of the degeneracy in both even-modes and odd-modes is
referred to the web version of this article.) verified.
370 X. Peng et al. / Optics Communications 294 (2013) 368–371

Fig. 4. (a) The transmission spectra of ASR filter with Lx ¼300 nm and Lx ¼350 nm. (b) Semi-integer mode resonance wavelength as a function of Lx. (c) Semi-integer mode
resonance wavelength vs. the width of the aperture W3. (d) Semi-integer mode resonance wavelength vs. the dielectric constant n of the medium in the aperture.

3.2. ASR filter Fig. 4(c) shows that by varying the width of W3, the resonance
wavelength also can be manipulated. When increasing W3 from
In this section, the aperture-coupled square-ring resonator 30 nm to 70 nm, the TM2.5 mode wavelength drops from 756 nm
(ASR) based filter is studied in detail. Fig. 1(b) shows the to 726 nm and TM1.5 mode wavelength drops from 1345 nm to
schematic of the ASR filter. In contrast to the RSSR filter, one 1288 nm. This can be explained as follows: increasing the width
narrow aperture (bridge) exists between the bus waveguide and of W3 equals increasing the width of part of W2, which means a
the square-ring. decrease on neff. Thus, according to the resonance condition (4),
Fig. 3(a) shows the transmission spectrum of the ASR filter. In the wavelength decreases. Fig. 4(d) plots the variation of semi-
Fig. 3(a) the structural parameters of the ASR filter are set to be integer modes wavelength as a function of refractive index of the
Lx¼ Ly¼300 nm, W1¼ W2¼50 nm, g¼ 25 nm, W3¼50 nm. The medium in the aperture. From Fig. 4(d), the transmission shift to
transmission of RSSR filter with the same parameter is also longer wavelength as n increases. It is also easy to find, from
plotted in Fig. 3(b). By comparing the two spectra, for ASR filter, Fig. 4(b)–(d), TM1.5 varies more drastically than TM2.5. This can be
two new resonance modes appear, while the regular integer- interpreted by the following equations derived from resonance
modes wavelengths almost stay at the same position. The conditions (4). l ¼ Lnef f =N, dlN ¼ 1:5 =dlN ¼ 2:5 ¼ nef f 1:5 =nef f 2:5  2
magnetic-field distributions of the new drops show these modes 4 1. From the above expression, we explain why in Fig. 4(b)–
are semi-integer modes. The resonance wavelength at 742 nm (d), TM1.5 has a larger inclination value than TM2.5.
which is denoted by TM2.5 has five magnetic antinodes. The
resonance wavelength at 1276 nm, which is denoted by TM1.5,
has three magnetic antinodes. The resonance wavelengths accord
with the resonance condition equation (4) in general. For 4. Conclusion
lr ¼742 nm, N ¼2.5. For lr ¼1276 nm, N ¼1.5. N ¼0.5 at longer
wavelength is not discussed in this paper. These semi-modes are In summary, a regular side-coupled square-ring resonator
not declared in Ref. [14]. It should be noticed that these semi- (RSSR) based filter and an aperture-coupled square-ring resonator
integer modes are different from the semi-interger modes in Ref. (ASR) based filter are presented. The characteristics of the RSSR
[20]. As can be seen from Fig. 3(a), magnetic field near the filter and ASR filter are analyzed in detail by using FDTD method.
aperture is same-phase, however, in Ref. [20], it is anti-phase. Lifting of degeneracy for both odd-mode and even-mode in the
According to the above phenomenon, by placing one aperture RSSR filter is observed at the first time. Semi-integer resonance
between the ring and the bus waveguide, new semi-integer modes emerge in the optical transmission spectrum for ASR filter.
modes can be excited. It is also worthy to notice that these The effects of parameters of the resonators such as side length of
semi-integer modes have higher a drop efficiency compared to the ring, the width of the aperture and the medium inside the
the regular integer modes. aperture on the wavelength of semi-integer modes are discussed.
Characteristics of these semi-integer modes are investigated. Numerical calculations are consistent with theoretical analysis in
One of the ways to manipulate the transmission spectra of ASR general. The simple band-stop SPP filter is very promising for
filter is by changing the side length Lx. Fig. 4(a) shows the high-density SPP waveguide integrations.
transmission spectra of ASR filter with different Lx values of
300 nm and 350 nm. By increasing the side length Lx, the
resonance exhibits a red shift for both integer and semi-integer
modes. This can be explained by Eq. (4), as Lx increases, Acknowledgments
L increases, so the resonance wavelength increases. For clarity,
the wavelength of the TM1.5 and TM2.5 as a function of side length This work was funded by the Research Fund for the Doctoral
Lx is plotted in Fig. 4(b). As Lx varies from 250 nm to 350 nm, Program of Higher Education of China under Grant No.
TM2.5 changes from 621 nm to 873 nm, while for TM1.5 the 20100162110068 and the National Natural Science Foundation
wavelength changes from 1070 nm to 1485 nm. of China under Grant Nos. 61275174 and 11164007.
 X. Peng et al. / Optics Communications 294 (2013) 368–371 371

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