Applications
A slot-waveguide produces high E-field amplitude, optical power, and optical intensity in low-index materials at levels that cannot be achieved with conventional waveguides. This property allows highly efficient interaction between fields and active materials, which may lead to all-optical switching, optical amplification and optical detection on integrated photonics. Strong E-field confinement can be localized in a nanometer-scale low-index region. As firstly pointed out in, the slot waveguide can be used to greatly increase the sensitivity of compact optical sensing devices or to enhance the efficiency of near-field optics probes. At Terahertz frequencies, slot waveguide based splitter has been designed which allows for low loss propagation of Terahertz waves. The device acts as a splitter through which maximum throughput can be achieved by adjusting the arm length ratio of the input to the output side.
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