A metal/multi-insulator/metal waveguide plasmonic Bragg grating with a large dynamic range of index modulation is investigated analytically and numerically. Theoretical formalism of the dispersion relation for the present and general one-dimensional gratings is developed for TM waves in the vicinity of each stop band. Wide-band and narrow-band designs with their respective FWHM bandwidths of 173.4 nm and < 3.4 nm in the 1550 nm band using a grating length of < 16.0 mu m are numerically demonstrated. Time-average power vortexes near the silica-silicon interfaces are revealed in the stop band and are attributed to the contra-flow interaction and simultaneous satisfactions of the Bragg condition for the incident and backward-diffracted waves. An enhanced forward-propagating power is thus shown to occur over certain sections within one period due to the power coupling from the backward-diffracted waves. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America
