Metasurfaces for Amplitude-Tunable Superposition of Plasmonic Orbital Angular Momentum States

The superposition of orbital angular momentum (OAM) in a surface plasmon polariton (SPP) field has attracted much attention in recent years for its potential applications in classical physics problems and quantum communications. The flexible adjustment of the amplitudes of two OAM states can provide more freedom for the manipulation of superposed states. Here, we propose a type of plasmonic metasurface consisting of segmented spiral-shaped nanoslits that not only can generate the superposition of two OAM states with arbitrary topological charges (TCs), but also can independently modulate their relative amplitudes in a flexible manner. The TCs of two OAM states can be simultaneously modulated by incident light, the rotation rate of the nanoslits, and the geometric parameters of the segmented spiral. The relative amplitudes of the two OAM states are freely controllable by meticulously tuning the width of the nanoslits. Under a circularly polarized beam illumination, two OAM states of opposite TCs can be superposed with various weightings. Furthermore, hybrid superposition with different TCs is also demonstrated. The presented design scheme offers an opportunity to develop practical plasmonic devices and on-chip applications.

Automated summary

The superposition of orbital angular momentum (OAM) in a surface plasmon polariton (SPP) field has attracted much attention in recent years. In this study, a plasmonic metasurface consisting of segmented spiral-shaped nanoslits is proposed to generate the superposition of two OAM states with arbitrary topological charges (TCs) and independently modulate their relative amplitudes. This design scheme offers opportunities for developing practical plasmonic devices and on-chip applications.