Ph.D. Seminar topic Analytical and Numerical Modeling of Subwavelength Plasmonic-waveguide Components for Nanophotonic Applications

Recently, in optics there has been a surge of interest in miniaturized metallic structures
that allow sub-wavelength control of electromagnetic energy in the infrared and visible
bands of the spectrum. This results an emerging field of science known as plasmonics,
which has plethora of applications such as nanoscale optical interconnects,
chemical/bio-sensors, high-resolution microscopy, etc.
This research aims to investigate various plasmonic waveguide-based optical
components in terms of equivalent transmission-line networks. This representation
allows one to use classical network analysis tools in microwave engineering to obtain
analytical expressions that describe the transmission response of useful devices in
nanophotonics. The derived formulae provide rapid design optimization paths unlike the
computationally expensive and time consuming numerical simulations.