Physics-Guided Neural-Network-Based Inverse Design of a Photonic–Plasmonic Nanodevice for Superfocusing

Controlling the nanoscale light-matter interaction using superfocusing hybrid photonic-plasmonic devices has attracted significant research interest in tackling existing challenges, including converting efficiencies, working bandwidths, and manufacturing complexities. With the growth in demand for efficient photonic-plasmonic input-output interfaces to improve plasmonic device performances, sophisticated designs with multiple optimization parameters are required, which comes with an unaffordable computation cost. Machine learning methods can significantly reduce the cost of computations compared to numerical simulations, but the input-output dimension mismatch remains a challenging problem. Here, we introduce a physics-guided two-stage machine learning network that uses the improved coupled-mode theory for optical waveguides to guide the learning module and improve the accuracy of predictive engines to 98.5%. A near-unity coupling efficiency with symmetry-breaking selectivity is predicted by the inverse design. By fabricating photonic-plasmonic couplers using the predicted profiles, we demonstrate that the excitation efficiency of 83% on the radially polarized surface plasmon mode can be achieved, which paves the way for super-resolution optical imaging.