Experimental control of optical helicity in nanophotonics
View/ Open
File version
Version of Record (VoR)
Author(s)
Tischler, Nora
Fernandez-Corbaton, Ivan
Zambrana-Puyalto, Xavier
Minovich, Alexander
Vidal, Xavier
Juan, Mathieu L
Molina-Terriza, Gabriel
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2014
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
An analysis of light–matter interactions based on symmetries can provide valuable insight, particularly because it reveals which quantities are conserved and which ones can be transformed within a physical system. In this context, helicity can be a useful addition to more commonly considered observables such as angular momentum. The question arises how to treat helicity, the projection of the total angular momentum onto the linear momentum direction, in practical experiments. In this paper, we put forward a simple but versatile experimental treatment of helicity. We then apply the proposed method to the scattering of light ...
View more >An analysis of light–matter interactions based on symmetries can provide valuable insight, particularly because it reveals which quantities are conserved and which ones can be transformed within a physical system. In this context, helicity can be a useful addition to more commonly considered observables such as angular momentum. The question arises how to treat helicity, the projection of the total angular momentum onto the linear momentum direction, in practical experiments. In this paper, we put forward a simple but versatile experimental treatment of helicity. We then apply the proposed method to the scattering of light by isolated cylindrical nanoapertures in a gold film. This allows us to study the helicity transformation taking place during the interaction of focused light with the nanoapertures. In particular, we observe from the transmitted light that the scaling of the helicity transformed component with the aperture size is very different to the direct helicity component.
View less >
View more >An analysis of light–matter interactions based on symmetries can provide valuable insight, particularly because it reveals which quantities are conserved and which ones can be transformed within a physical system. In this context, helicity can be a useful addition to more commonly considered observables such as angular momentum. The question arises how to treat helicity, the projection of the total angular momentum onto the linear momentum direction, in practical experiments. In this paper, we put forward a simple but versatile experimental treatment of helicity. We then apply the proposed method to the scattering of light by isolated cylindrical nanoapertures in a gold film. This allows us to study the helicity transformation taking place during the interaction of focused light with the nanoapertures. In particular, we observe from the transmitted light that the scaling of the helicity transformed component with the aperture size is very different to the direct helicity component.
View less >
Journal Title
Light: Science and Applications
Volume
3
Copyright Statement
© The Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. The images or other third
party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless
indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative
Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce
the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by-nc-nd/3.0/
Subject
Atomic, molecular and optical physics
Classical and physical optics