Crosstalk prohibition at the deep-subwavelength scale by epsilon-near-zero claddings

To prevent the crosstalk between adjacent waveguides in photonic integrated circuits, the minimum thickness of the cladding layers is around half a wavelength, which imposes a fundamental limitation to further integration and miniaturization of photonic circuits. Here, we reveal that epsilon-near-zero claddings, either isotropic or anisotropic, can break the above bottleneck by prohibiting the crosstalk for the modes with magnetic field polarized in the z direction at a deep-subwavelength thickness (e.g., λ ₀/30, λ ₀ is the free-space wavelength), therefore bestowing ultra-compact waveguide systems. The physical origin of this remarkable effect attributes to the divergent impedance of epsilon-near-zero materials far beyond those of dielectric or epsilon-negative claddings. Through full-wave simulations and microwave experiments, we have verified the effectiveness of the ultrathin epsilon-near-zero cladding in crosstalk prohibition. Our finding reveals the significant impact of impedance difference in waveguide designs and opens a promising route toward ultra-compact photonic chips.