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Directional Excitation of Surface Plasmon Polaritons by Circularly Polarized Vortex Beams

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Abstract

We investigate the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) using a metallic nanoaperture array illuminated by circularly polarized Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) vortex beams. The direction of SPP excitation is tunable by changing the circular polarization and topological charge of LG beams. The left- or right-handed circular polarization determines SPP propagation on either side of the nanoaperture array. Furthermore, varying the topological charge of LG beam will result in beam splitting of SPPs. We also utilize a composite nanoaperture array with different periods to achieve unidirectional excitation of SPPs. The study provides an interesting approach to control the excitation direction of SPPs and may find great applications in SPP generators and optical switches.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11674117).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics and School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Qing Tu, Jianxun Liu, Bing Wang & Peixiang Lu

  2. Hubei Key Laboratory of Optical Information and Pattern Recognition, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan, 430205, China

    Shaolin Ke & Peixiang Lu

Authors
  1. Qing Tu
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  2. Jianxun Liu
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  3. Shaolin Ke
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  4. Bing Wang
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  5. Peixiang Lu
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Correspondence to Bing Wang.

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Tu, Q., Liu, J., Ke, S. et al. Directional Excitation of Surface Plasmon Polaritons by Circularly Polarized Vortex Beams. Plasmonics 15, 727–734 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-019-01075-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-019-01075-9

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