Tunneling-based optical filters

Photon tunneling through metal layers and total-internal-reflection interfaces continues to be a subject of great interest in the photonics community. Aside from providing a convenient platform for fundamental studies of tunneling phenomena, metal-dielectric and frustrated-total-internal reflection (FTIR) structures have recently played an important role in the recent development of metamaterials. Moreover, these concepts continue to be fertile soil for the development of optical filters, polarizers, and other functional elements.

Dime for scale

We conduct research on the optimization and customization of tunneling-based optical filters, including:

  1. Applying admittance-matching concepts and potential transmittance theory for the understanding and design of high-transmission bands in metal-dielectric stacks containing many skin depths of total metal.
  2. Applying similar theories to the design of novel band-pass filters based on tunneling through air-gap structures. These filters exhibit extended out-of-band rejection ranges with high optical density.

    We are currently developing MEMS-based implementations of these filters.

    References

    1. 1. A. Melnyk, M. H. Bitarafan, T. W. Allen, and R. G. DeCorby, "An air gap resonant tunneling bandpass filter and polarizer," Opt. Lett. 41, 1845-1848 (2016).
      http://doi.org/10.1364/OL.41.001845
    2. 2. M. C. Zhang, T. W. Allen, and R. G. DeCorby, "Experimental study of optimized surface-plasmon-mediated tunneling in metal-dielectric multilayers," Appl. Phys. Lett. 103, 071109 (2013).
      http://doi.org/10.1063/1.4819098
    3. 3. T. W. Allen and R. G. DeCorby, "Conditions for admittance-matched tunneling through symmetric metal-dielectric stacks," Opt. Express 20, A578-A588 (2012).
      https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.20.00A578
    4. 4. T. W. Allen and R. G. DeCorby, "Assessing the maximum transmittance of periodic metal-dielectric multilayers," J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 28, 2529-2536 (2011).
      https://doi.org/10.1364/JOSAB.28.002529