Theoretical investigation of photonic crystal waveguide splitters incorporating ultralow refractive index metallic nanowires

The present letter theoretically investigates the optical properties, and provides design guidelines for optimum performance of a photonic crystal (PC) waveguide splitter composed of ultralow refractive index metamaterials, by utilizing a rigorous analytical modeling based on the scattering matrix technique. We believe that this type of nanocomposite metallic PC waveguide can bring additional degrees of design flexibility to ultradense optical integration, because of its compact size and relatively low-loss propagation characteristics, mainly for power-splitting applications in the visible frequency spectrum.