Shift of surface plasmon-polaritons resonances via acoustic waves in hybrid metal-semiconductor structures

Abstract

We discuss theoretical results proving feasibility of an approach capable to perform high-frequency (up to terahertz band) acoustic modulation of the plasmonic structures. The numerical calculations performed for the case of gold grating on the top of the GaAs/AlAs-based acoustic cavity suggest that the relative modulation of the light reflection can be as high as few percents for the strain amplitude of the acoustic mode about 10-4, the value which can be easily achieved with the use of picosecond acoustics technique.