Spin-locking metasurface for surface plasmon routing

• Published in: Scientific reports 2019-06, Vol.9 (1), p.8963-7, Article 8963
• Main Authors: Revah, Matan, Yaroshevsky, Andre, Gorodetski, Yuri
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 132/124; 142/126; 639/624/400/1021; 639/925/927/1021; Design; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Polarized light; Propagation; Radiation measurement; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-45513-4

Nanophotonic circuitry requires an ability to externally control and analyze optical signals tightly confined in subwavelength volumes. Various schemes of surface plasmon (SP) routing have been presented using active and passive metasurfaces. One of the most appealing approaches is the use of plasmonic spin-orbit interaction where the incident light spin state is efficiently coupled to an orbital degree of freedom of the surface wave. Recently, a major attention has been drawn to an additional plasmonic degree of freedom - the transverse spin and some application for near-field plasmonic manipulations have been presented. Here we propose a spin-locking metasurface incorporating a transverse spin of the SP wave to selectively route the near-field beams. Owing to the combination of the oblique incidence of circularly polarized light with the accurately designed momentum matching of the grating we achieve a precise directional control over the plasmonic distributions. The experimental verification of the directional launching is performed by a time-resolved leakage radiation measurements allowing one to visualize the shape and the dynamics of the excited beam.