Plasmonic antennas as building blocks for spin optics and quantum optics applications

Abstract

In this invited paper, we review some of our latest works on plasmonic antennas and their interactions with photonic angular momentum. As receiving antennas, both theoretical and experimental results reveal that spiral plasmonic antenna responds differently to photons with left-hand circular polarization and right-hand circular polarization. This spin degeneracy removal finds many potential applications including extremely small circular polarization analyzer for polarimetric imaging, parallel near field probes for optical imaging and sensing, nano-lithography and high density heat assisted magnetic recording. On the transmitter side, through coupling quantum dot nano-emitters to spiral plasmonic antenna, nano-scale spin photon sources with high directivity and circular polarization extinction ratio is demonstrated. Numerical modeling and experimental evidences also indicate that the emitted photons can be imprinted with the photonic spin angular momentum and orbital angular momentum information simultaneously via the interactions between photonic angular momentum and plasmonic antennas. These findings not only are useful for the fundamental understanding of the interaction between plasmonic antennas and photonic angular momentum but also illustrate the versatility of plasmonic antennas as building blocks for practical spin optics and quantum optics devices and systems.