Polarization-based dynamic manipulation of Bessel-like surface plasmon polaritons beam

Opt Express. 2018 Mar 5;26(5):5461-5468. doi: 10.1364/OE.26.005461.

Abstract

Taking advantage of the phase modulation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) generated by subwavelength slits, we elaborately designed an axicon-shaped slit array to dynamically manipulate the profiles of Bessel-like SPPs beams by changing the polarization of the incident light. As the polarization direction of linearly polarized light changes from horizontal to vertical, the profile of SPPs beam will evolve from the zeroth-order Bessel function to the first-order Bessel function. For circularly polarized light, the geometry Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) phase is introduced and can lead to the transverse shift of the main lobe of SPPs beam. The evolution of the beam profile and the distance of the transverse shift are theoretically illustrated by analyzing the phase distribution of SPPs. The proposed versatile approach suggests charming applications including on-chip communications, polarization-controlled particle manipulation and the design of polarization-based dynamic SPPs devices.