Anomalous optical coupling between two silicon wires of a slot waveguide in epsilon-near-zero metamaterials

Anomalous optical coupling properties between two silicon wires in a silicon slot waveguide embedded in epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) metamaterials are proposed and demonstrated. The dependences of optical field enhancement in the slot region and transverse optical force on the slot size and the permittivity of surrounding material are studied in details. It is demonstrated that the optical field in the slot region is significantly enhanced due to the giant index contrast at the slot interface between silicon wires and ENZ metamaterials, but the optical mode coupling between silicon wires is greatly reduced so that the transverse optical force is suppressed into almost zero. Moreover, metal-dielectric multilayer structures are designed to realize ENZ metamaterials in the slot region for achieving the electric field enhancement. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.