Nanoscale Control over Optical Dislocations

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates nano-scale control of plasmonic vortices on metal-air interfaces by tuning light polarization, enabling precise manipulation of optical dislocations with implications for advanced photonic applications.

Contribution

It introduces a method for continuous nano-scale tuning of plasmonic vortices via polarization control, a novel approach in optical vortex manipulation.

Findings

Achieved nano-scale control of vortex location using polarization variation.

Demonstrated phase-resolved near-field microscopy for precise measurement.

Showed potential applications in trapping and super-resolution imaging.

Abstract

High-order optical vortices are inherently unstable, as they tend to split up under perturbation to a series of vortices with unity charge. Control over the perturbation opens up a new degree of freedom to control and tune their location in a 2D-space, with immediate implications on trapping, light-matter interactions and super-resolution imaging. Here, we present a continuous nano-scale tuning of the spatial location of plasmonic vortices on metal-air interface achieved by varying the polarization state of the light coupled to the surface plasmons through a spiral slit. We demonstrate such a control at nano-scale resolution using phase-resolved near-field microscopy.