Observation of surface-plasmon phenomena that are dependent upon the handedness of the circularly polarized incident light (spin) is presented. The polarization-dependent near-field intensity distribution obtained in our experiment is attributed to t
he presence of a geometric phase arising from the interaction of light with an anisotropic and inhomogeneous nanoscale structure. A near-field vortex surface mode with a spin-dependent topological charge was obtained in a plasmonic microcavity. The remarkable phenomenon of polarization-sensitive focusing in a plasmonic structure was also demonstrated.
