Enhancement and tuning of spin Hall effect of light in plasma metamaterial waveguide

Abstract

The spin Hall effect of light (SHEL) is a transport phenomenon where the left- and right-circular components will be split and show a small transverse shift perpendicular to the incident plane when the linear polarized light is incident to a planar dielectric interface. In this paper, we have demonstrated a plasma metamaterial waveguide cladded with dielectrics to explore the characteristics of SHEL. The results show that the plasma metamaterial can behave a dielectric, hyperbolic metamaterial, or a metal depending on the plasma filling factor. We also find that the properties of SHEL are actively tunable and can be enhanced by using the proposed plasma metamaterial waveguide. Meanwhile, the enhanced SHEL can be realized in the whole plasma filling factor range. Moreover, the optimal thicknesses of plasma metamaterial and the resonant angles for huge beam displacements with different plasma filling factors are presented. This simple three-layer structure can be used for yielding meaningful results for stu...