Spatial control of surface plasmon polariton excitation at planar metal surface.

We illustrate that the surface plasmon polariton (SPP) excitation through the prism coupling method is fundamentally limited by destructive interference of spatial light components. We propose that the destructive interference can be canceled out by tailoring the relative phase for the different wave-vector components. As a numerical demonstration, we show that through the phase modulation the excited SPP field is concentrated to a hot energy spot, and the SPP field intensity is dramatically enhanced about three-fold in comparison with a conventional Gaussian beam illumination. The proposed phase-shaped beam approach provides a new degree of freedom to fundamentally control the SPP excitation and benefits the development of surface-enhanced applications.

[1]  S. Maier.  Plasmonics: Fundamentals and Applications , 2007 .

[2]  Enhancing optical switching with coherent control , 2010 .

[3]  Lukas Novotny,et al.  Surface-enhanced nonlinear four-wave mixing. , 2010, Physical review letters.

[4]  Giovanni Volpe,et al.  Surface plasmon radiation forces. , 2006, Physical review letters.

[5]  Anne Sentenac,et al.  Subdiffraction light focusing on a grating substrate. , 2008, Physical review letters.

[6]  W. Chew.  Waves and Fields in Inhomogeneous Media , 1990 .

[7]  L. Novotný,et al.  Nonlinear excitation of surface plasmon polaritons by four-wave mixing. , 2008, Physical review letters.

[8]  Bing Zhao,et al.  Long-Range Surface Plasmon Field-Enhanced Raman Scattering Spectroscopy Based on Evanescent Field Excitation , 2011 .

[9]  Roux,et al.  Robust Acoustic Time Reversal with High-Order Multiple Scattering. , 1995, Physical review letters.

[10]  G. G. Stokes.  "J." , 1890, The New Yale Book of Quotations.

[11]  D. Bergman,et al.  Coherent control of femtosecond energy localization in nanosystems. , 2002, Physical review letters.

[12]  Romain Quidant,et al.  Plasmon nano-optical tweezers , 2011 .

[13]  H. Haus.  Waves and fields in optoelectronics , 1983 .

[14]  A. Mosk,et al.  Exploiting disorder for perfect focusing , 2009, 0910.0873.

[15]  David J. Bergman,et al.  Coherent control of nanoscale localization of ultrafast optical excitation in nanosystems , 2004 .

[16]  Y. Silberberg,et al.  Coherent transient enhancement of optically induced resonant transitions. , 2002, Physical review letters.

[17]  R. W. Christy,et al.  Optical Constants of the Noble Metals , 1972 .

[18]  A. Zelenina,et al.  Parallel and selective trapping in a patterned plasmonic landscape , 2007, 2007 IEEE/LEOS International Conference on Optical MEMS and Nanophotonics.

[19]  Allard Mosk,et al.  Active spatial control of plasmonic fields , 2011 .

[20]  J. Homola.  Surface plasmon resonance sensors for detection of chemical and biological species. , 2008, Chemical reviews.

[21]  S. R. Garner,et al.  Coherent control of optical information with matter wave dynamics , 2007, Nature.

[22]  P. Bucksbaum,et al.  Controlling the shape of a quantum wavefunction , 1999, Nature.

[23]  U. Woggon,et al.  Nonlinear plasmon-photon interaction resolved by k-space spectroscopy. , 2012, Physical review letters.

[24]  Michael Bauer,et al.  Adaptive subwavelength control of nano-optical fields , 2007, Nature.

[25]  N I Zheludev,et al.  Coherent control of nanoscale light localization in metamaterial: creating and positioning isolated subwavelength energy hot spots. , 2010, Physical review letters.