# 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.

## Key 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.

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Source: https://tomesphere.com/paper/1706.00577