Excitation of a nanowire "molecule" in gold-filled photonic crystal fiber

A pair of gold nanowires, incorporated into a photonic crystal fiber, acts as a plasmonic "molecule." Hybridized modes are excited at specific wavelengths by launching light into the glass core. The formation of bonding and antibonding solutions results in a modal splitting of more than 100 nm, even though the spatial separation between the wires is larger than 3 μm. The study provides insight into multiwire plasmonic devices with applications as polarizers or filters in near-field optics, nonlinear plasmonics, optical sensing, and telecommunications.