Design of a compact and highly sensitive modal interferometer using hybrid modes of a dielectric loaded plasmonic waveguide.

We show the presence of hybridization between fundamental TE and first higher-order TM modes in a dielectric loaded plasmonic waveguide of appropriately chosen core dimensions. Furthermore, a critical hybridization point is achieved at which both modes have nearly equal fraction of the TE and TM polarizations. Exploiting the interference among such modes, we propose the design of a compact and highly sensitive modal interferometer. The bulk and surface sensitivities of the proposed sensor are found to be ∼3-10µ/ for refractive index (RI) ∼1.33-1.36 and ∼0.7/ for an adsorbed layer of RI 1.45, respectively. The proposed sensor gives robust performance against fabrication imperfections and is stable against temperature fluctuations due to extremely low temperature cross-sensitivity (∼10-15/ for a temperature change up to ∼100).