Abstract
Surface-plasmon-polariton (SPP) waveguides made of materials available
in nature have, in general, been found to suffer from very high absorption
loss when light confinement is beyond diffraction limit. In this
paper, the possibility of combining both the conventional
index-guiding and the SPP-guiding mechanisms together into one single
waveguide is being explored. Such waveguides, expectedly, inherent the low-loss feature
of all-dielectric waveguides as well as the superior mode field
confinement possessed by SPP waveguides. By using experimentally ready
materials, it is theoretically shown that compact metallodielectric
waveguides can be designed with a