Optical singularities in plasmonic fields near single subwavelength holes

Abstract

We identify phase and polarization singularities in near-field measurements and theoretical modeling of the electric near-field distributions that result from the scattering of surface plasmon polaritons from single subwavelength holes in optically thick gold films. We discuss properties of the singularities, such as their topological charge or the field amplitudes at their locations. We show that it is possible to tune the in-plane field amplitude at the positions of the polarization singularities by three orders of magnitude simply by varying the hole or incident plasmon beam size.