The experimental evidence of a strong coupling regime in the hybrid Tamm plasmon-surface plasmon polariton mode

Abstract

Total internal reflection ellipsometry was employed for the excitation and study of hybrid Tamm plasmon-surface plasmon polaritons mode. Simple optical methodology using optical filters to cut the part of incident light spectra was proposed. Using optical filters measured energy spectra was divided into two parts where in each range only one branch of the hybrid TPP-SPP plasmonic mode was excited directly by the incident light. Present experimental studies have shown, that if the investigated system is in strong coupling, this is always enough to excite only one component of the hybrid excitation. Thus, its dispersion relation will be the same as when the excitation is done with a whole spectrum. In the case of the TPP-SPP hybrid mode where strong coupling is realized only in p-polarized light, the fitting results have shown that the strongest coupling was at the point where the noninteracting TPP and SPP curves should be crossing. The obtained Rabi splitting for the hybrid TPP and SPP modes in BK7 prism/1D PC TiO2/SiO2 (60 nm/110 nm)/TiO2 (30 nm)/Au (40 nm) multilayered structure was about 105 meV.

Keywords

• hybrid tamm plasmon-surface plasmon polaritons
• strong coupling
• total internal reflection ellipsometry