Waveguide Mode Splitter Based on Multi-mode Dielectric-Loaded Surface Plasmon Polariton Waveguide

In photonic integrated circuits, information is usually encoded in the optical path. In this work, based on the multi-mode dielectric-loaded surface plasmon polariton waveguide, we numerically design a directional coupler, which can divide the different waveguide eigenmodes into different optical paths. The results show a possibility to encode information onto different waveguide modes. We also experimentally demonstrate that the splitting ratio of this directional coupler structure can be tuned without changing its size.