Arbitrary spin-controlled directional coupling of surface plasmon polaritons

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method to control the direction of surface plasmon polaritons using arbitrary spin polarizations, enabling precise polarization splitting and advancing plasmonic device capabilities.

Contribution

The work presents a new scheme for arbitrary spin-controlled directional coupling of SPPs, surpassing previous methods limited to orthogonal polarizations.

Findings

Device can split adjacent polarization components to opposite directions

Enables polarization sensing and splitting applications

Offers versatile design for polarization-controlled plasmonic devices

Abstract

Controlling the directionality of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) has been widely studied, while the direction of SPPs was always switched by orthogonal polarizations in the reported methods. Here, we present a scheme to control the directionality of SPPs by arbitrary spin polarizations. Extremely, the device can split two quite adjacent polarization components to two opposite directions. The versatility of the presented design scheme can offer opportunities for polarization sensing, polarization splitting and polarization-controlled plasmonic devices.