Numerical studies of coupling in dielectric loaded plasmons

In this paper we present a numerical analysis of two coupling mechanism between an input radiation field and a plasmonic waveguide. This analysis is realized by designing and simulating a surface plasmonic structure compound of a slab dielectric waveguide patterned on a thin film of noble metal. In order to determine what is the best coupling mechanism we realize a comparison between these two methods (air coupling and coupling through a tapered waveguide) with the direct method. For this numerical analysis we use the finite-difference timedomain (FDTF) method.