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Spin-Momentum Locking in the Near Field of Metal Nanoparticles

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 Added by Salvatore Savasta
 Publication date 2017
  fields Physics
and research's language is English




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Light carries both spin and momentum. Spin-orbit interactions of light come into play at the subwavelength scale of nano-optics and nano-photonics, where they determine the behaviour of light. These phenomena, in which the spin affects and controls the spatial degrees of freedom of light, are attracting rapidly growing interest. Here we present results on the spin-momentum locking in the near field of metal nanostructures supporting localized surface resonances. These systems can confine light to very small dimensions below the diffraction limit, leading to a striking near-field enhancement. In contrast to the propagating evanescent waves of surface plasmon-polariton modes, the electromagnetic near-field of localized surface resonances does not exhibit a definite position-independent momentum or polarization. Our results can be useful to investigate the spin-orbit interactions of light for complex evanescent fields. Note that the spin of the incident light can control the rotation direction of the canonical momentum.



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115 - Peng Shi , Luping Du , Congcong Li 2019
Quantum spin-Hall effect, a manifestation of topological properties that govern the behavior of surface states, was studied intensively in condensed matter physics resulting in the discovery of topological insulators. The quantum spin-Hall effect of light was introduced for surface plane-waves which intrinsically carry transverse optical spin, leading to many intriguing phenomena and applications in unidirectional waveguiding, metrology and quantum technologies. In addition to spin, optical waves can exhibit complex topological properties of vectorial electromagnetic fields, associated with orbital angular momentum or nonuniform intensity variations. Here, by considering both spin and angular momentum, we demonstrate a generalized spin-momentum relationship that governs vectorial properties of guided electromagnetic waves, extending optical quantum spin-Hall effect to a two-dimensional vector field of structured guided wave. The effect results in the appearance of the out-of-plane transverse optical spins, which vary progressively from the up state to the down state around the energy flow, and their variation is uniquely locked to the energy propagation direction. The related spin-momentum locking in a chiral spin swirl is demonstrated with four kinds of surface structured waves and proven both theoretically and experimentally. The results provide understanding of the spin dynamics in electromagnetic guided waves and show great importance in spin optics, topological photonics and optical spin-based devices and techniques.
Topology of isofrequency surfaces plays a crucial role in characterizing the interaction of an electromagnetic wave with a medium. Thus, engineering the topology in complex media is leading to novel applications, ranging from super-resolution microscopy with hyperbolic metamaterials to sub-wavelength waveguiding structures. Here, we investigate the spin-governed nature of isofrequency surfaces in a general gyromagnetic medium. We show that gyrotropy also plays an important role in the topological properties of a medium, along with the anisotropic permeability and permittivity. Even though the topology primarily depends on permeability, gyrotropy can suppress or support the existence of certain topological surfaces. We reveal the connection between the gyrotropy imposed constraints and the photonic spin-profile of the topological surfaces. The spin-profile along the isofrequency surface is locked to the material, resulting in the non-reciprocity and breaking of the spin-momentum locking in the gyromagnetic medium. Further, we show that the conflict between spin-momentum locking and material locked spin leads to asymmetric mode profile and gyrotropy-induced cutoff in guided wave structures. Our work provides important insights into the underlying link between topology, spin, and non-reciprocity in gyrotropic media.
Spin and orbital angular momentum of light plays a central role in quantum nanophotonics as well as topological electrodynamics. Here, we show that the thermal radiation from finite-sized bodies comprising of nonreciprocal magneto-optical materials can exert a spin torque even in global thermal equilibrium. Moving beyond the paradigm of near-field heat transfer, we calculate near-field radiative angular momentum transfer between finite-sized nonreciprocal objects by combining Rytovs fluctuational electrodynamics with the theory of optical angular momentum. We prove that a single magneto-optical cubic particle in non-equilibrium with its surroundings experiences a torque in the presence of an applied magnetic field (T-symmetry breaking). Furthermore, even in global thermal equilibrium, two particles with misaligned gyrotropic axes experience equal magnitude torques with opposite signs which tend to align their gyrotropic axes parallel to each other. Our results are universally applicable to semiconductors like InSb (magneto-plasmas) as well as Weyl semi-metals which exhibit the anomalous Hall effect (gyrotropy) at infrared frequencies. Our work paves the way towards near-field angular momentum transfer mediated by thermal fluctuations for nanoscale devices.
Circular dichroism (CD) caused by the response of a chiral object to circularly polarized light has been well established, and the strong CD of plasmonic meta-molecules has also become of interest in recent years; however, their response if the light also has orbital angular momentum is unclear. In this paper, the dichroism of a plasmonic cuboid-protuberance chiral structure under the illumination of a light beam with both orbital and spin angular momentums is numerically investigated. Distinguished spectra are observed under the different momentums. The circular dichroism under the combination of vortex beam and light spin is enhanced. This phenomenon is attributed to the partial spatial excitation of the nanoparticle, and the strong dichroism is simultaneously caused because of the interaction of the induced electric and magnetic modes and other higher-order modes caused by the partial excitation of the vortex beam. This research provides further insight into chiral light-matter interactions and the dichroism of light with orbital angular momentum.
Spin-momentum locking is a unique feature of spin-orbit coupled materials and a key to their promise of applications in spintronics and quantum computation. Much of the existing work has been focused on an orthogonal locking between the directions of spin and momentum vectors in the context of both topological and non-topological materials. Mechanisms responsible for non-orthogonal spin-momentum locking (NOSML) have drawn little attention, although an NOSML effect has been reported on the topological surface of $alpha$-$Sn$. Here, we demonstrate how spin-orbit scattering from non-magnetic impurities can produce the NOSML state. The parameter describing spin-orbit coupling strength in our analysis of the NOMSL could be extracted directly from the spin-resolved angle-resolved photoemission (S-ARPES) spectra. Our formalism is applicable to all spin-orbit coupled systems and not limited only to topological states. An understanding of NOSML effects bears on spin-orbit dependent phenomena more generally, including issues of spin-to-charge conversion and the interpretation of quasiparticle interference (QPI) patterns and scanning-tunneling spectra (STS) in materials.
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