On-chip plasmonic waveguide optical waveplate.

Polarization manipulation is essential in almost every photonic system ranging from telecommunications to bio-sensing to quantum information. This is traditionally achieved using bulk waveplates. With the developing trend of photonic systems towards integration and miniaturization, the need for an on-chip waveguide type waveplate becomes extremely urgent. However, this is very challenging using conventional dielectric waveguides, which usually require complex 3D geometries to alter the waveguide symmetry and are also difficult to create an arbitrary optical axis. Recently, a waveguide waveplate was realized using femtosecond laser writing, but the device length is in millimeter range. Here, for the first time we propose and experimentally demonstrate an ultracompact, on-chip waveplate using an asymmetric hybrid plasmonic waveguide to create an arbitrary optical axis. The device is only in several microns length and produced in a flexible integratable IC compatible format, thus opening up the potential for integration into a broad range of systems.