Sensitivity enhancement in optical waveguide sensors using metamaterials

Abstract

We consider a four-layer waveguide structure as an optical waveguide sensor. One of the layers is a metamaterial with negative permittivity and permeability. We show that the sensitivity of the proposed optical waveguide sensor can be dramatically enhanced by using a metamaterial layer between the guiding and the cladding layers. The variation of the sensitivity of the proposed waveguide sensor with different parameters of the waveguide is studied.