English

Synthetic Spatiotemporal Plasmonic Vortices On Chip

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2025-11-21 v1

Abstract

Spatiotemporal vortices are polychromatic modes that intertwine orbital angular momentum (OAM) in space and time. Here we introduce a new class of such vortices, spatiotemporal plasmonic vortices (STPVs), carrying nontrivial topological spin textures. They are generated by chronotopic interference of temporally delayed plasmonic eigen-vortices, where a π\pi-phase dislocation in the space-frequency domain maps into a 2π\pi spiraling phase in space-time, with the resulting focus-defocus dynamics emulate U(1) gauge transitions. Using interferometric time-resolved photoemission electron microscopy (ITR-PEEM), we directly image their nanometer-attosecond (nano-atto) evolution and control vortex number and position. Quantum-path analysis of coherent two-photon photoemission (2PP) processes reveals the nonlinear plasmonic polarization fields and angular-momentum conservation, establishing STPVs as a platform for probing spatiotemporally structured quantum matter.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.16155,
  title  = {Synthetic Spatiotemporal Plasmonic Vortices On Chip},
  author = {Qian Chen and Shuoshuo Zhang and Guoyu Xian and Haoqiang Hu and Xiaohua Wu and Xiaofei Wu and Jer-Shing Huang and Chen-Bin Huang and Jin-Hui Zhong and Yuquan Zhang and Xiaocong Yuan and Changjun Min and Yanan Dai},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.16155},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T07:46:51.284Z