Generation and near-field imaging of Airy surface plasmons

We demonstrate experimentally the generation and near-field imaging of nondiffracting surface waves - plasmonic Airy beams, propagating on the surface of a gold metal film. The Airy plasmons are excited by an engineered nanoscale phase grating, and demonstrate significant beam bending over their propagation. We show that the observed Airy plasmons exhibit self-healing properties, suggesting novel applications in plasmonic circuitry and surface optical manipulation.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Generation and Near-Field Imaging of Airy Surface Plasmons

We demonstrate experimentally the generation and near-field imaging of nondiffracting surface waves, plasmonic Airy beams, propagating on the surface of a gold metal film. The Airy plasmons are excited by an engineered nanoscale phase grating, and demonstrate significant beam bending over their propagation. We show that the observed Airy plasmons exhibit self-healing properties, suggesting novel applications in plasmonic circuitry and surface optical manipulation

Controlling plasmonic hot spots by interfering Airy beams

We predict and demonstrate the generation of a plasmonic hot spot on the surface of a metal film by the interference of two Airy surface plasmons. We show that the position of the hot spot can be controlled by the distance between the excitation gratings as well as by the phase front of the initial excitation. The observed effect constitutes a planar analogy to Airy beam autofocusing and offers new opportunities for spatially resolved surface plasmon sensing and optical surface tweezers.We acknowledge support from the German Research Foundation [SPP 1391 “Ultrafast Nanooptics” and Jena School for Microbial Communication (JSMC)], the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (PhoNa), the Thuringian Ministry of Education Science and Culture (MeMa), the Australian Research Council, the Go-8 Australia-Germany (Go8-DAAD) Joint Research Cooperation Scheme, and the Australian National Computational Infrastructure

Generation and near-field imaging of Airy plasmons

We demonstrate experimentally the generation and near-field imaging of propagating Airy plasmon beams. These self-accelerating plasmons exhibit self-healing properties and enable novel applications of plasmonics and surface optical tweezers

Near-field mapping of airy plasmons

The field of plasmonics experiences an explosive growth with a number of developing applications in biosensing, particle manipulation and photonic circuitry. This development has motivated the emerging field of plasmon optics dealing with the manipulation and engineering of plasmon beams. Airy beams represent an important class of non-diffracting wavepackets [1] which evolution in space (or time) resembles curved trajectories. While known for decades in several fields of physics, the optical Airy beams have only recently been observed experimentally [2]. Importantly, for one-dimensional wavepackets, such as surface plasmon waves, the Airy beams represent the only possible class of non-diffracting beams. Very recently it was predicted theoretically [3] that one-dimensional self-accelerating beams can exist in the form of surface Airy plasmons, however such plasmons have never been demonstrated experimentally. Here we present the first experimental generation and direct observation of Airy plasmons on the surface of a gold metal film

Near-field observation of Airy plasmons

We demonstrate experimentally the generation and near-field imaging of propagating Airy plasmon beams. These self-accelerating plasmons exhibit self-healing properties and enable novel applications of plasmonics and surface optical tweezers