Tunable spin Hall shift of light from graphene-wrapped spheres

Graphene has taken impressive roles in light manipulation and optical engineering. The most attractive advantage of graphene is its tunable conductivity that could be dynamically modulated by various means. In this paper, we show that the spin Hall shift of light is dynamically tunable via changing the Fermi level of the graphene-wrapped spheres. Such tunability is prominent when different modes interfere with each other, such as at the interference of electric and magnetic dipolar modes or at the interference of electric dipolar and electric quadrupole modes. The circular polarization degree in the near field clearly demonstrates the strength of spin-orbit interaction, which is associated with spin Hall shift of light in the far-field. In addition, the spin Hall effect is shown in far-field detection plane and should be observed in experiment. Our results provide insights into how the spin Hall effect could be tuned and add new perspective in designing optical super-resolution imaging techniques. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

Automated summary

This paper demonstrates the dynamic tunability of spin Hall shift of light by changing the Fermi level of graphene-wrapped spheres, especially prominent when different modes interfere with each other. The circular polarization degree in the near field shows the strength of spin-orbit interaction, and the spin Hall effect should be observable in far-field detection in experiments.