English

Functional meta lenses for compound plasmonic vortex field generation and control

Optics 2021-05-13 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

Surface plasmon polaritons carrying orbital angular momentum are of great fundamental and applied interest. However, common approaches for their generation are restricted to having a weak dependence on the properties of the plasmon-generating illumination, providing a limited degree of control over the amount of delivered orbital angular momentum. Here we experimentally show that by tailoring local and global geometries of vortex generators, a change in circular polarization handedness of light imposes arbitrary large switching in the delivered plasmonic angular momentum. Using time-resolved photoemission electron microscopy we demonstrate pristine control over the generation and rotation direction of high-order plasmonic vortices. We generalize our approach to create complex topological fields and exemplify it by studying and controlling a "bright vortex", exhibiting the breakdown of a high-order vortex into a mosaic of unity-order vortices while maintaining the overall angular momentum density. Our results provide tools for plasmonic manipulation and could be utilized in lab-on-a-chip devices.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2102.06033,
  title  = {Functional meta lenses for compound plasmonic vortex field generation and control},
  author = {Eva Prinz and Grisha Spektor and Michael Hartelt and Anna-Katharina Mahro and Martin Aeschlimann and Meir Orenstein},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.06033},
  year   = {2021}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T23:04:15.693Z