Angular dependence of optical modes in metal-insulator-metal coupled quantum well infrared photodetector

We report the dependence of the near-field optical modes in metal-insulator-metal quantum well infrared photodetector (MIM-QWIP) on the incident angles. Three optical modes are observed and attributed to the 2nd- and the 3rd-order surface plasmon polariton (SPP) modes and the localized surface polariton (LSP) mode. In addition to the observation of a responsivity enhancement of 14 times by the LSP mode, the varying pattern of the three modes against the incident angle are revealed, in which the LSP mode is fixed while the 2nd SPP mode splits into two branches and the 3rd SPP mode red-shifts. The detailed mechanisms are analyzed and numerically simulated. The results fit the experiments very well, demonstrating the wavevector coupling effect between the incident light and the metal gratings on the SPP modes. Our work will pave the way to fully understanding the influence of incident angles on a detector’s response for applying the MIM-QWIP to focal plane arrays.