Eur. Phys. J. D (2021) 75: 222
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/s10053-021-00231-3

Regular Article – Optical Phenomena and Photonics

Storage and retrieval of nonlinear surface plasmon polariton solitons via electromagnetically induced transparency in a metal–dielectric–metal waveguide

¹ School of Physics and Electronics, Shandong Normal University, 250014, Jinan, China
² State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics, Department of Physics, Peking University, 100871, Beijing, China

^e sdnujiaoyang@sdnu.edu.cn

Received: 4 December 2020
Accepted: 12 July 2021
Published online: 9 August 2021

Abstract

We propose a scheme to realize storage and retrieval of symmetric and antisymmetric nonlinear surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) solitons via electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a metal–dielectric–metal (MDM) waveguide. The dielectric is chosen as ladder-type three-level atoms with incoherent pumping. We find that the Ohmic loss of both symmetric and antisymmetric modes in the system can be totally compensated under EIT condition but with different incoherent pumps. The transparency window becomes wider for the symmetric mode, but deeper for the antisymmetric mode, when incoherent pumping exists. We also show that in nonlinear propagation regime, a huge enhancement of Kerr nonlinearity of the symmetric and antisymmetric SPPs can be obtained, and gain-assisted ()-dimensional symmetric and antisymmetric subluminal SPPs solitons can be produced, stored and retrieved with high efficiency and stability. At last, we study the strategies to optimize the optical memory for the two modes. Our study may have promising applications in light information processing and transmission at nanoscale level based on MDM waveguides.