Tunable all-optical plasmonic diode based on Fano resonance in nonlinear waveguide coupled with cavities

Tunable all-optical plasmonic diode is proposed based on the Fano resonance in an asymmetric and nonlinear system, comprising metal-insulator-metal waveguides coupled with nanocavities. The spatial asymmetry of the system gives rise to the nonreciprocity of the field localizations at the nonlinear gap between the coupled cavities and to the nonreciprocal nonlinear response. Nonlinear Fano resonance, originating from the interference between the discrete cavity mode and the continuum traveling mode, is observed and effectively tuned by changing the input power. By combining the unidirectional nonlinear response with the steep dispersion of the Fano asymmetric line shape, a transmission contrast ratio up to 41.46 dB can be achieved between forward and backward transmission. Our all-optical plasmonic diode with compact structure can find important applications in integrated optical nanocircuits. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America