Photonic metasurfaces are metamaterials with reduced dimensionality composed of engineered subwavelength-scale meta-atoms enabling to mold optical wavefronts with ultrathin planar components. Alongside, spinoptics provides an additional route to control light, whereby the photon helicity (spin angular momentum) degeneracy is removed due to a geometric gradient onto a metasurface. In this talk, we show that the alliance of spinoptics and metasurfaces offers to govern the light-matter interaction of a structured matter in a polarization helicity-dependent manner. By investigating the angular momentum selection rule, we observe an optical spin symmetry breaking in enhanced light transmission through plasmonic nanoapertures. Moreover, a spin-dependent momentum redirection is presented by the optical spin Hall effects in plasmonic chains and by interfering topological defects. We also show that polarization-controlled optical modes of a metasurface arise where the spatial inversion symmetry is violated. The emerged spin-split dispersion originates from the spin-orbit interaction of light, generating a selection rule based on symmetry restrictions in a spinoptical metasurface. This allows spin-based surface-wave unidirectional and multidirectional excitations via the optical Rashba effect offering control of the propagation direction. Spinoptical metasurfaces provide a route for new era of light manipulation via state-of-the-art polarization-based nanophotonic devices which can integrate with nanoelectronic circuits.


Seminar, March 27, 2014, 12:00. Seminar Room

Hosted by Prof. Romain Quidant