Plasmonically enhanced optical transmission through a metalized nanostructured photonic crystal fiber taper

A subwavelength holey plasmonic structure was proposed by adiabatically tapering a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) and subsequently metalizing the cleaved end facet. By coupling a white light into the PCF side, we experimentally observed an enhanced optical transmission in the spectral domain through the plasmonic structure at the tapered end. We further showed numerically that the proposed device renders a focused directional beam, due to its Fresnel-zone-like configuration and the plasmonic lensing effects.