522 research outputs found
Mimicking Chiral Light-Matter Interaction
We demonstrate that electric-dipole scatterers can mimic chiral light-matter
interaction by generating far-field circular polarization upon scattering, even
though the optical chirality of the incident field as well as that of the
scattered light is zero. The presented effect originates from the fact that
electric-dipole scatterers respond selectively only to the incident electric
field, which eventually results in depolarization of the transmitted beam and
in generation of far-field circular polarization. To experimentally demonstrate
this effect we utilize a cylindrical vector beam with spiral polarization and a
spherical gold nanoparticle positioned on the optical axis -- the axis of
rotational symmetry of the system. Our experiment and a simple theoretical
model address the fundamentals of duality symmetry in optics and chiral
light-matter interactions, accentuating their richness and ubiquity yet in
highly symmetric configurations.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
Spin-Orbit Coupling and the Evolution of Transverse Spin
We investigate the evolution of transverse spin in tightly focused circularly
polarized beams of light, where spin-orbit coupling causes a local rotation of
the polarization ellipses upon propagation through the focal volume. The effect
can be explained as a relative Gouy-phase shift between the circularly
polarized transverse field and the longitudinal field carrying orbital angular
momentum. The corresponding rotation of the electric transverse spin density is
observed experimentally by utilizing a recently developed reconstruction
scheme, which relies on transverse-spin-dependent directional scattering of a
nano-probe.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
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Optical Polarization M\"obius Strips and Points of Purely Transverse Spin Density
Tightly focused light beams can exhibit electric fields spinning around any
axis including the one transverse to the beams' propagation direction. At
certain focal positions, the corresponding local polarization ellipse can
degenerate into a perfect circle, representing a point of circular
polarization, or C-point. We consider the most fundamental case of a linearly
polarized Gaussian beam, where - upon tight focusing - those C-points created
by transversely spinning fields can form the center of 3D optical polarization
topologies when choosing the plane of observation appropriately. Due to the
high symmetry of the focal field, these polarization topologies exhibit non
trivial structures similar to M\"obius strips. We use a direct physical measure
to find C-points with an arbitrarily oriented spinning axis of the electric
field and experimentally investigate the fully three-dimensional polarization
topologies surrounding these C-points by exploiting an amplitude and phase
reconstruction technique.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; additional supplementary materials with 4 pages,
3 figure
Towards an optical far-field measurement of higher-order multipole contributions to the scattering response of nanoparticles
We experimentally show an all-optical multipolar decomposition of the
lowest-order Eigenmodes of a single gold nanoprism using azimuthally and
radially polarized cylindrical vector beams. By scanning the particle through
these tailored field distributions, the multipolar character of the Eigenmodes
gets encoded into 2D-scanning intensity maps even for higher-order
contributions to the Eigenmode that are too weak to be discerned in the direct
far-field scattering response. This method enables a detailed optical mode
analysis of individual nanoparticles.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
The magnetic and electric transverse spin density of spatially confined light
When a beam of light is laterally confined, its field distribution can
exhibit points where the local magnetic and electric field vectors spin in a
plane containing the propagation direction of the electromagnetic wave. The
phenomenon indicates the presence of a non-zero transverse spin density. Here,
we experimentally investigate this transverse spin density of both magnetic and
electric fields, occurring in highly-confined structured fields of light. Our
scheme relies on the utilization of a high-refractive-index nano-particle as
local field probe, exhibiting magnetic and electric dipole resonances in the
visible spectral range. Because of the directional emission of dipole moments
which spin around an axis parallel to a nearby dielectric interface, such a
probe particle is capable of locally sensing the magnetic and electric
transverse spin density of a tightly focused beam impinging under normal
incidence with respect to said interface. We exploit the achieved experimental
results to emphasize the difference between magnetic and electric transverse
spin densities.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure
Waveguide properties of single subwavelength holes demonstrated with radially and azimuthally polarized light
We investigate the transmission of focused beams through single subwavelength
holes in a silver film. We use radially and azimuthally polarized light,
respectively, to excite higher order waveguide modes as well as to match the
radial symmetry of the aperture geometry. Remarkably, the transmission
properties can be described by a classical waveguide model even for thicknesses
of the silver film as thin as a quarter of a wavelength
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