Guiding and confining light in void nanostructure

We present a novel waveguide geometry for enhancing and confining light in a nanometer-wide low-index material. Light enhancement and confinement is caused by large discontinuity of the electric field at high-index-contrast interfaces. We show that by use of such a structure the field can be confined in a 50-nm-wide low-index region with a normalized intensity of 20 mum(-2). This intensity is approximately 20 times higher than what can be achieved in SiO2 with conventional rectangular waveguides. (C) 2004 Optical Society of America.