As one of the recent advances of optics and photonics,plasmonics has enabled unprecedented optical designs.Having a vectorial configuration of surface plasmon field,metallic nanostructures offer efficient solutions in...As one of the recent advances of optics and photonics,plasmonics has enabled unprecedented optical designs.Having a vectorial configuration of surface plasmon field,metallic nanostructures offer efficient solutions in polarization control with a very limited sample thickness.Many compact polarization devices have been realized using such metallic nanostructures.However,in most of these devices,the functions were usually simple and limited to a few polarization states.Here,we demonstrated a plasmonic polarization generator that can reconfigure an input polarization to all types of polarization states simultaneously.The plasmonic polarization generator is based on the interference of the in-plane(longitudinal)field of the surface plasmons that gives rise to versatile near-field polarization states on a metal surface,which have seldom been considered in previous studies.With a well-designed nanohole array,the in-plane field of SPPs with proper polarization states and phases can be selectively scattered out to the desired light beams.A manifestation of eight focusing beams with well-routed polarizations was experimentally demonstrated.Our design offers a new route to achieve the full control of optical polarizations and possibly advance the development in photonic information processing.展开更多
基金This work was supported by the National Key Projects for Basic Researches of China(No.2012CB921501)and the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.11174136,11322439,11321063,and 91321312)This work was also supported by the Dengfeng Project B and Outstanding Ph.D.candidate Program A of Nanjing University and the PAPD project of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions.
文摘As one of the recent advances of optics and photonics,plasmonics has enabled unprecedented optical designs.Having a vectorial configuration of surface plasmon field,metallic nanostructures offer efficient solutions in polarization control with a very limited sample thickness.Many compact polarization devices have been realized using such metallic nanostructures.However,in most of these devices,the functions were usually simple and limited to a few polarization states.Here,we demonstrated a plasmonic polarization generator that can reconfigure an input polarization to all types of polarization states simultaneously.The plasmonic polarization generator is based on the interference of the in-plane(longitudinal)field of the surface plasmons that gives rise to versatile near-field polarization states on a metal surface,which have seldom been considered in previous studies.With a well-designed nanohole array,the in-plane field of SPPs with proper polarization states and phases can be selectively scattered out to the desired light beams.A manifestation of eight focusing beams with well-routed polarizations was experimentally demonstrated.Our design offers a new route to achieve the full control of optical polarizations and possibly advance the development in photonic information processing.
