Magneto-optical isolation and topological edge states at singular points in plasmonic structures

Abstract

We introduce a nanoplasmonic isolator consisting of a cavity coupled to a metal-dielectric-metal (MDM) waveguide. The waveguide and cavity are filled with a magneto-optical (MO) material, and the structure is under a static magnetic field. We show that, when MO activity is present, the cavity becomes a traveling wave resonator with unequal decay rates into the forward and backward directions. As a result, the structure operates as an isolator. We also introduce non-Hermitian plasmonic waveguide-cavity systems with topological edge states (TESs) at singular points. The structure unit cells consist of an MDM waveguide side-coupled to MDM stub resonators with modulated distances between adjacent stubs. In such structures the modulated distances introduce an effective gauge magnetic field. We show that such structures achieve extremely high sensitivity of the reflected light intensity. TESs at singular points could lead to singularity-based plasmonic devices with enhanced performance.