Modern communication systems dealing with huge amounts of data at ever increasing speed try to utilize the best aspects of electronic and optical circuits. Electronic circuits are tiny but their operation speed is limited, whereas optical circuits are extremely fast but their sizes are limited by diffraction. Waveguide components utilizing surface plasmon (SP) modes were found to combine huge optical bandwidth and compactness of electronics, and plasmonics thereby became considered as the next chip-scale technology. In this book, we concentrate on the SP waveguide configurations ensuring nanoscale confinement and review the current status of this rapidly emerging field, considering different configurations being developed for nanoscale plasmonic guides and circuits. Both fundamental physics and application aspects of plasmonics are reviewed in detail by world-leading experts.

A unique featureof this book is its strong focus on a particular subfield of plasmonics dealing with subwavelength (nanoscale) waveguiding, an area which is especially important in view of explosively growing interest to plasmonic interconnects and nanocircuits. This research direction came to the fore very recently, driven by the ever increasing demand of faster and smaller interconnects to be used inside computer chips, and stimulated by the progress in our understanding of basic physical phenomena involved in SP excitation, imaging and manipulation.

Contents:Introduction to Surface Plasmon-Polariton Waveguides (S I Bozhevolnyi); Negative Dielectric Optical Waveguides for Nano-Optical Guiding (J Takahara); Nanoparticle Plasmon Waveguides (S A Maier); Surface Plasmon Polariton Gap Waveguide and Its Applications (K Tanaka); Metal Heterostructures (G P Wang); Plasmonic Slot Waveguides (G Veronis & S Fan); All-Optical Plasmonic Modulators and Interconnects (D Pacifici et al.); Metal Trench Waveguides: Experiments and Analysis (M Orenstein); Fundamentals of Channel and Wedge Plasmon Polaritons (E Morerno et al.); Channel Plasmon-Polaritons in Triangular Grooves (D K Gramotnev); Nanophotonic Components Utilizing Channel Plasmon Polaritons (V S Volkov et al.); Adiabatic Concentration and Coherent Control in Nanoplasmonic Waveguides (M I Stockman); Nanoplasmonics: Components, Devices and Circuits (M L Brongersma et al.).