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Optics Communications
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/optcom
Current Perspectives
Center of Ultra-Precision Optoelectronic Instrument, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150080, China
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada NS B3J 1Z1
art ic l e i nf o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 26 November 2015
Received in revised form
27 January 2016
Accepted 29 January 2016
Available online 12 February 2016
The divergence and directivity of a laser with a periodic YagiUda optical antenna array modulated
surface are investigated by nite element method. The nanoparticle optical antenna arrays are optimized
to achieve the high directivity and the small divergence by using of Helmholtz's reciprocity theorem.
When the nanoparticle antenna replaced by a YagiUda antenna with same size, the directivity and the
signal-to-noise ratio of the modulated laser beam are notably enhanced. The main reason is that the
directors of the YagiUda antennas induce more energy to propagate towards the antenna transmitting
direction. The results can provide valuable guidelines in designing collimated laser, which can be widely
applied in the eld of biologic detection, spatial optical communication and optical measurement.
& 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Diffraction theory
Radial polarization
Subwavelength focusing
1. Introduction
Optical antennas have the potential application in the eld of
optical sensing and detection due to their high efciency and directivity [15]. Generally, the divergence angle of a beam from a
waveguide cannot be smaller than their diffraction limit
= arcsin (/s ), where and s represent the wavelength of light in
vacuum and the thickness of a waveguide core, respectively.
Generally, if optical elements are not applied to modulate the
beam, the vertical divergence angle in a semiconductor laser, such
as quantum cascade laser (QCL), generally ranges from 30 to 80
at full-width at half maximum (FWHM) [6]. Therefore, a series of
theory and technology were proposed to realize small divergence
angle in the past years [710].
Recently, metallic nanostructure has shown great potential
applications in the eld of lithography and laser direct writing.
Metallic plasmonic nanostructures have many advantages in terms
of conversion efciency, directivity and miniaturization. Therefore,
various optically metallic nanostructures were investigated and
experimentally demonstrated to collimate the beam. The diffraction free beam with 6-degree divergence angle was rstly
achieved by Ebbesen et al. by using the bull's-eye-patterned metal
plate in the visible frequency region [11]. In 2008, a mid-infrared
QCL with 2.7 divergence was realized by patterning an asymmetric metallic grating on the facet of a laser [12]. YagiUda antenna, which was rstly proposed in 1926, is famous for the high
n
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: linjie@hit.edu.cn (J. Lin).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.optcom.2016.01.090
0030-4018/& 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
198
Therefore, the far-eld divergence is highly compressed by interference effect. Meanwhile, the directivity and signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR) are also enhanced by the antenna array.
2. Methods
A silver nanoparticle, which is shown in Fig. 1(a), is an optical
antenna. Their directivity is usually poor comparing with that of
the other antenna, such as the YagiUda antenna. A typical Yagi
Uda antenna consists of driver element and parasitic elements as
shown in Fig. 1(b). The parameters of the silver optical YagiUda
antenna are optimized for the incident beam with the wavelength
of 633 nm. The width w of the ve nanoparticles is 60 nm. The
length f of the feed is 200 nm. d and r are 120 nm and 240 nm,
respectively. The distances between directors and the feed are
200 nm, and the distance between the feed with the reector is
160 nm. The size of the nanoparticle antenna is the same as the
feed in the YagiUda antenna. From Fig. 1(c), the directivity of
YagiUda antenna is better than that of a nanoparticle antenna.
The FWHM of the divergence angle of the YagiUda antenna is
approximately 40 in the transmitting direction.
A symmetric metallic nanostructure with periodic grooves is
designed to investigate the directivity of nanoparticle antenna
array. The structure is shown in Fig. 2(a), where the silver grating
patch height and width are 60 nm and 200 nm, respectively. The
height and width of the patch are equal to the width and length of
the nanoparticle antenna. The thickness of grating h is about
120 nm. The width s of the laser port is 400 nm. The wavelength
of incident light is 633 nm. The material around the grating is
vacuum. Based on the Helmholtz reciprocity theorem, the structure parameters are optimized [22]. The grating period is optimized as 600 nm. The groove number is 16. The optimized silver
groove is introduced to the exit port of a laser. A 100 nm thickness
substrate, which is lled between the laser facet and the silver
grating, is worked as the insulating layer. In this structure, the
patch of the grating is regarded as a silver nanoparticle antenna
attached on the silver layer. Therefore, the whole grating acts as
the nanoparticle antenna array. For the grating with a period of
600 nm, the phases of each optical nanoparticle antenna are equal.
Because of the interference effect, the intensity is increasing in a
narrow angle, which means a small divergence angle. The distance
Fig. 2. (a) Nanoparticle antenna array and (b) YagiUda antenna array on the facet
of a laser. h, w, s, p and d1 are 120 nm, 60 nm, 400 nm, 700 nm and 660 nm,
respectively.
between the rst particle antenna and the port has a strong inuence on the propagation of surface plasmons excited at the port
of laser [23]. The distance d1 is specially optimized as 700 nm.
Fig. 1. (a) Schematic of a nanoparticle antenna. (b) Nanoparticle optical YagiUda antenna. f is 200 nm. d and r are 120 nm and 240 nm, respectively. (c) Lobe patterns of
(a) and (b).
199
Fig. 3. (a) Intensity distribution of electric eld near the port without patterned surface. (b) Same as Fig. 3(a) but collimated by the nanoparticle antenna array.
intensity distribution of electric eld around the port with unpatterned surface indicates that the power is distributing in the
half space. For the case modulated by the nanoparticle array, the
intensity distribution of electric eld is displayed in Fig. 3(b). The
power induced by nanoparticles diffracts into space with a consistent directivity. The magnitude decays from the middle to both
sides, owing to the energy loss during propagation. In Fig. 4, the
intensity distribution at far eld is shown as the blue line marked
by circles for array modulated exit port. Obviously, the energy
concentrates in a small angle. The FWHM and SNR are approximately 8 and 3:1, respectively.
To further improve the directivity and reduce the far-eld divergence, the YagiUda array is introduced. The nanoparticle arrays are replaced by the YagiUda array. The designed structure is
given in Fig. 2(b). In this structure, the patch of the grating acts as
the feed of the YagiUda antenna. The nanoparticles marked by 1,
2, 3 are the directors of the YagiUda antenna. The dielectric
material around the antenna array is vacuum. Excited at the exit
port of the laser, surface plasmons wave propagates along the
surface of the grating to both sides. The feeds of the YagiUda
array are driven by surface plasmons wave and then induced by
the directors towards the antenna transmitting direction. If reectors are embedded between the grating and the laser, the light
Fig. 5. Electric eld intensity distribution near the exit port of the laser.
200
compressed and the divergence angle is 11. The ratio of the angle
in YagiUda-embedded-SiO2-substrate/free-space to that in
YagiUda-embedded-SiO2/SiO2 is 16/11 1.455. Considering the
refractive index of SiO2 with 1.457, they are approximate each
other. It indicates that the refraction occurring at facet of SiO2 and
free space will raise the divergence angle of YagiUda antennas
array.
4. Conclusion
Fig. 6. Curve marked by circles represents the far eld electric eld intensity divergence of a laser beam modulated by the nanoparticle antenna array settled in
SiO2. Curve marked by triangles represents the far eld electric intensity divergence of a laser beam modulated by the YagiUda antenna array.
Here, a periodic YagiUda antenna array is proposed to improve the divergence and directivity of the laser beam. Based on
Helmholtz's reciprocity theorem, the periodic nanoparticle optical
antenna array is optimized and calculated by FEM. The periodic
YagiUda antenna array with the feeds of the same size of the
nanoparticles can enhance the directivity and SNR, simultaneously. The directors of the YagiUda antenna array induce more
energy to propagate towards the antenna transmitting direction.
The YagiUda antenna array structure integrated on the exit facet
of a laser compresses the laser divergence angle to 8 with a SNR
larger than 5:1. The directivity is approximately 17. The antenna
array can be embedded in various dielectric materials such as SiO2.
The YagiUda antenna array can avoid the shortcomings existed in
the quantum dots excitation conguration. The results have shown
great potential of the collimated laser in domains such as detection, spatial communication and metrology.
Acknowledgments
This work is nancially funded by National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant no. 51275111) and the Program for
New Century Excellent Talents in University (Grant NECT100059).
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