Bistable switching in the lossy side-coupled plasmonic waveguide-cavity structures

We show numerically that the lossy side-coupled plasmonic resonators can be used as bistable switches without compensation. While the internal loss imposes on the bistable characteristics by reducing the transmission contrast and raising the input power requirement, it makes the switching more available by enlarging the width of the hysteresis loop. We also correct the nonlinear transmission formula of the resonators to adapt the lossy condition. Both the theoretical and simulation results are in good agreement. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America