Excitation of surface plasmons in a single silver nanowire using higher-order-mode light

Excitation of surface plasmons in a single silver nanowire using higher-order-mode light shows that nanowire waveguide has no request on the spatial mode of the input light, which is determined by its orbital angular momentums (OAM) in the experiment. The excitation efficiency can be controlled by adjusting the light polarization. Experimental result also indicates that the propagating modes of surface plasmons in nanowire are not the OAM eignenstates. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.