No Arabic abstract
Spin and angular momenta of light are important degrees of freedom in nanophotonics which control light propagation, optical forces and information encoding. Typically, optical angular momentum is generated using q-plates or spatial light modulators. Here, we show that graphene-supported plasmonic nanostructures with broken rotational symmetry provide a surprising spin to orbital angular momentum conversion, which can be continuously controlled by changing the electrochemical potential of graphene. Upon resonant illumination by a circularly polarized plane wave, a polygonal array of indium-tin-oxide nanoparticles on a graphene sheet generates scattered field carrying electrically-tunable orbital angular momentum. This unique photonic spin-orbit coupling occurs due to the strong coupling of graphene plasmon polaritons and localised surface plasmons of the nanoparticles and leads to the controlled directional excitation of graphene plasmons. The tuneable spin-orbit conversion pave the way to high-rate information encoding in optical communications, electric steering functionalities in optical tweezers, and nanorouting of higher-dimensional entangled photon states.
Controlling directional emission of nanophotonic radiation sources is fundamental to tailor radiation-matter interaction and to conceive highly efficient nanophotonic devices for on-chip wireless communication and information processing. Nanoantennas coupled to quantum emitters have proven to be very efficient radiation routers, while electrical control of unidirectional emission has been achieved through inelastic tunneling of electrons. Here we prove that the radiation emitted from the interaction of a high-energy electron beam with a graphene-nanoparticle composite has beaming directions which can be made to continuously span the full circle even through small variations of the graphene Fermi energy. Emission directionality stems from the interference between the double cone shaped electron transition radiation and the nanoparticle dipolar diffraction radiation. Tunability is enabled since the interference is ruled by the nanoparticle dipole moment whose amplitude and phase are driven by the hybrid plasmonic resonances of the composite and the absolute phase of the graphene plasmonic polariton launched by the electron, respectively. The flexibility of our method provides a way to exploit graphene plasmon physics to conceive improved nanosources with ultrafast reconfigurable radiation patterns.
Vanadium tetracyanoethylene (V[TCNE]$_text{x}$) is an organic-based ferrimagnet that exhibits robust magnetic ordering (T$_text{C}$ of over 600 K), high quality-factor (high-Q) microwave resonance (Q up to 3,500), and compatibility with a wide variety of substrates and encapsulation technologies. Here, we substantially expand the potential scope and impact of this emerging material by demonstrating the ability to produce engineered nanostructures with tailored magnetic anisotropy that serve as a platform for the exploration of cavity magnonics, revealing strongly coupled quantum confined standing wave modes that can be tuned into and out of resonance with an applied magnetic field. Specifically, time-domain micromagnetic simulations of these nanostructures faithfully reproduce the experimentally measured spectra, including the quasi-uniform mode and higher-order spin-wave (magnon) modes. Finally, when the two dominant magnon modes present in the spectra are brought into resonance by varying the orientation of the in-plane magnetic field, we observe anti-crossing behavior indicating strong coherent coupling between these two magnon modes at room temperature. These results position V[TCNE]$_text{x}$ as a leading candidate for the development of coherent magnonics, with potential applications ranging from microwave electronics to quantum information.
Chiral spin textures are researched widely in condensed matter systems and show potential for spintronics and storage applications. Along with extensive condensed-matter studies of chiral spin textures, photonic counterparts of these textures have been observed in various optical systems with broken inversion symmetry. Unfortunately, the resemblances are only phenomenological. This work proposes a theoretical framework based on the variational theorem to show that the formation of photonic chiral spin textures in an optical interface is derived from the systems symmetry and relativity. Analysis of the optical systems rotational symmetry indicates that conservation of the total angular momentum is preserved from the local variations of spin vectors. Specifically, although the integral spin momentum does not carry net energy, the local spin momentum distribution, which determines the local subluminal energy transport and minimization variation of the square of total angular momentum, results in the chiral twisting of the spin vectors. The findings here deepen the understanding of the symmetries, conservative laws and energy transportation in optical system, construct the comparability in the formation mechanisms and geometries of photonic and condensed-matter chiral spin textures, and suggest applications to optical manipulation and chiral photonics.
The spin-orbit coupling (SOC) can mediate electric-dipole spin resonance (EDSR) in an a.c. electric field. In this letter, the EDSR is essentially understood as an spin precession under an effective a.c. magnetic field induced by the SOC in the reference frame, which is exactly following the classical trajectory of the electron and obtained by applying a quantum linear coordinate transformation. With this observation for one-dimensional (1D) case, we find a upper limit for the spin-flipping speed in the EDSR-based control of spin, which is given by the accessible data from the current experiment. For two-dimensional case, the azimuthal dependence of the effective magnetic field can be used to measure the ratio of the Rashba and Dresselhause SOC strengths.
Spin-dependent partial conductances are evaluated in a tight-binding description of electron transport in the presence of spin-orbit (SO) couplings, using transfer-matrix methods. As the magnitude of SO interactions increases, the separation of spin-switching channels from non-spin-switching ones is gradually erased. Spin-polarised incident beams are produced by including a Zeeman-like term in the Hamiltonian. The exiting polarisation is shown to exhibit a maximum as a function of the intensity of SO couplings. For moderate site disorder, and both weak and strong SO interactions, no evidence is found for a decay of exiting polarisation against increasing system length. With very low site disorder and weak SO couplings a spin-filter effect takes place, as polarisation {em increases} with increasing system length.