A four-port plasmonic quasi-circulator based on metal-insulator-metal waveguides.

A metal-insulator-metal (MIM)-based four-port quasi-circulator consisting of four bus waveguides and eight narrow inside/outside slits is proposed without using nonreciprocity. Once the input port is defined, only a specific output port could be obtained by proper the design of parameters of the waveguides and slits. Simulation results based on finite-different time-domain (FDTD) method demonstrate that the transmittance at the center wavelength of the appropriate output port can reach 0.63 while those of the other two output ports are lower than 0.06. Through adjusting the slits spacing or optimizing the insulator material in the slits, the isolation of the circulator could be further improved with a slight sacrifice of the transmission. Such structure could also be used for wavelength demultiplexing with the center wavelength determined by the length of the bus waveguides and slits.