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Register a new userMomentum-space geometric structure of helical evanescent waves and its implications on near-field directionality
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In this work, a momentum-space geometrical structure in helical evanescent electromagnetic waves is revealed. It is shown that for every helical evanescent wave on a helicity-dependent half tangent line in momentum space, the orientation of each of its field, spin, and Poynting vectors is the same. This geometric structure reveals itself as a remarkable relation between the far-field and near-field components of the angular spectrum. Any general evanescent wavevector is linked to two points on the $k_{rho}=k_0$ circle of propagating wavevectors via two helicity-dependent tangent lines. Knowing the field on the $k_{rho}=k_0$ circle of a general dipolar source is sufficient to determine its entire evanescent angular spectrum. Applying this concept, we gain insights into near-field directionality by showing that every zero in the angular spectrum is a helicity singularity where two half-tangent lines of opposite helicity intersect. A powerful method for synthetic design of near-field directional sources is also devised, using structured helical illumination to gain full control of the near-field directionality. The results provide a fundamental insight of helical evanescent waves and have implications in areas where chiral light-matter interaction plays a central role.
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Directional excitation of guidance modes is central to many applications ranging from light harvesting, optical information processing to quantum optical technology. Of paramount interest, especially, the active control of near-field directionality provides a new paradigm for the real-time on-chip manipulation of light. Here we find that for a given dipolar source, its near-field directionality can be toggled efficiently via tailoring the polarization of surface waves that are excited, for example, via tuning the chemical potential of graphene in a graphene-metasurface waveguide. This finding enables a feasible scheme for the active near-field directionality. Counterintuitively, we reveal that this scheme can transform a circular electric/magnetic dipole into a Huygens dipole in the near-field coupling. Moreover, for Janus dipoles, this scheme enables us to actively flip their near-field coupling and non-coupling faces.
Intense electromagnetic evanescent fields are thermally excited in near fields on material surfaces (at distances smaller than the wavelength of peak thermal radiation). The property of the fields is of strong interest for it is material-specific and is important for understanding a variety of surface-related effects, such as friction forces, Casimir forces, near-field heat transfer, and surface-coupled molecular dynamics. On metal surfaces, relevance of surface plasmon polaritons (SPlPs), coupled to collective motion of conduction electrons, has attracted strong interest, but has not been explicitly clarified up to the present time. Here, using a passive terahertz (THz) near-field microscope with unprecedented high sensitivity, we unveil detailed nature of thermally generated evanescent fields (wavelength:lamda0~14.5micron) on metals at room temperature. Our experimental results unambiguously indicate that the thermal waves are short-wavelength fluctuating electromagnetic fields, from which relevance of SPlPs is ruled out.
There has been significant interest in imaging and focusing schemes that use evanescent waves to beat the diffraction limit, such as those employing negative refractive index materials or hyperbolic metamaterials. The fundamental issue with all such schemes is that the evanescent waves quickly decay between the imaging system and sample, leading to extremely weak field strengths. Using an entropic definition of spot size which remains well defined for arbitrary beam profiles, we derive rigorous bounds on this evanescent decay. In particular, we show that the decay length is only $w / pi e approx 0.12 w$, where $w$ is the spot width in the focal plane, or $sqrt{A} / 2 e sqrt{pi} approx 0.10 sqrt{A}$, where $A$ is the spot area. Practical evanescent imaging schemes will thus most likely be limited to focal distances less than or equal to the spot width.
Abbes resolution limit, one of the best-known physical limitations, poses a great challenge for any wave systems in imaging, wave transport, and dynamics. Originally formulated in linear optics, this Abbes limit can be broken using nonlinear optical interactions. Here we extend the Abbe theory into a nonlinear regime and experimentally demonstrate a far-field, label-free, and scan-free super-resolution imaging technique based on nonlinear four-wave mixing to retrieve near-field scattered evanescent waves, achieving sub-wavelength resolution of $lambda/15.6$. This method paves the way for application in biomedical imaging, semiconductor metrology, and photolithography.
Far-field directional scattering and near-field directional coupling from simple sources have recently received great attention in photonics: beyond circularly-polarized dipoles, whose directional coupling to evanescent waves was recently applied to acoustics, the near-field directionality of modes in optics includes phased combinations of electric and magnetic dipoles, such as the Janus dipole and the Huygens dipole, both of which have been experimentally implemented using high refractive index nanoparticles. In this work we extend this to acoustics: we propose the use of high acoustic index scatterers exhibiting phased combinations of acoustic monopoles and dipoles with far-field and near-field directionality. All solutions stem from the elegant acoustic angular spectrum of the acoustic source, in close analogy to electromagnetism. A Huygens acoustic source with zero backward scattering is proposed and numerically demonstrated, as well as a Janus source achieving face-selective and position-dependent evanescent coupling to nearby acoustic waveguides.
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