Interferometric evanescent wave excitation of nano-antenna for ultra-sensitive displacement and phase metrology

We propose a method for ultra-sensitive displacement and phase metrology based on the interferometric evanescent wave excitation of nano-antennas. We show that with a proper choice of nano-antenna, tiny displacements or relative phase variations can be converted into sensitive scattering direction changes in the Fourier $k$-space. These changes stem from the strong position dependence of the imaginary Poynting vector orientation within interfering evanescent waves. Using strongly-evanescent standing waves, high sensitivity is achieved in the nano-antenna's zero scattering direction, which varies linearly with displacement over a long range. With weakly-evanescent wave interference, even higher sensitivity to tiny displacement or phase changes can be reached around chosen location. The high sensitivity of the proposed method can form the basis for many applications

Deep-subwavelength features of photonic skyrmions in a confined electromagnetic field with orbital angular momentum

In magnetic materials, skyrmions are nanoscale regions where the orientation of electron spin changes in a vortex-type manner. Here we show that spin-orbit coupling in a focused vector beam results in a skyrmion-like photonic spin distribution of the excited waveguided fields. While diffraction limits the spatial size of intensity distributions, the direction of the field, defining photonic spin, is not subject to this limitation. We demonstrate that the skyrmion spin structure varies on the deep-subwavelength scales down to 1/60 of light wavelength, which corresponds to about 10 nanometre lengthscale. The application of photonic skyrmions may range from high-resolution imaging and precision metrology to quantum technologies and data storage where the spin structure of the field, not its intensity, can be applied to achieve deep-subwavelength optical patterns

Nonlocal Optics of Plasmonic Nanowire Metamaterials

We present an analytical description of the nonlocal optical response of plasmonic nanowire metamaterials that enable negative refraction, subwavelength light manipulation, and emission lifetime engineering. We show that dispersion of optical waves propagating in nanowire media results from coupling of transverse and longitudinal electromagnetic modes supported by the composite and derive the nonlocal effective medium approximation for this dispersion. We derive the profiles of electric field across the unit cell, and use these expressions to solve the long-standing problem of additional boundary conditions in calculations of transmission and reflection of waves by nonlocal nanowire media. We verify our analytical results with numerical solutions of Maxwell's equations and discuss generalization of the developed formalism to other uniaxial metamaterials

Immersion microscopy based on photonic crystal materials

Theoretical model of the enhanced optical resolution of the surface plasmon immersion microscope is developed, which is based on the optics of surface plasmon Bloch waves in the tightly bound approximation. It is shown that a similar resolution enhancement may occur in a more general case of an immersion microscope based on photonic crystal materials with either positive or negative effective refractive index. Both signs of the effective refractive index have been observed in our experiments with surface plasmon immersion microscope, which is also shown to be capable of individual virus imaging.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figure

Magnetic dipole radiation tailored by substrates: numerical investigation

Nanoparticles of high refractive index materials can possess strong magnetic polarizabilities and give rise to artificial magnetism in the optical spectral range. While the response of individual dielectric or metal spherical particles can be described analytically via multipole decomposition in the Mie series, the influence of substrates, in many cases present in experimental observations, requires different approaches. Here, the comprehensive numerical studies of the influence of a substrate on the spectral response of high- index dielectric nanoparticles were performed. In particular, glass, perfect electric conductor, gold, and hyperbolic metamaterial substrates were investigated. Optical properties of nanoparticles were characterized via scattering cross-section spectra, electric field profiles, and induced electric and magnetic moments. The presence of substrates was shown to introduce significant impact on particle's magnetic resonances and resonant scattering cross-sections. Variation of substrate material provides an additional degree of freedom in tailoring properties of emission of magnetic multipoles, important in many applications.Comment: 10 page, 28 figure