Abstract
The spin Hall effect leads to the separation of electrons with opposite spins in different directions perpendicular to the electric current flow because of interaction between spin and orbital angular momenta. Similarly, photons with opposite spins (different handedness of circular light polarization) may take different trajectories when interacting with metasurfaces that break spatial inversion symmetry or when the inversion symmetry is broken by the radiation of a dipole near an interface. Here we demonstrate a reciprocal effect of spin-orbit coupling when the direction of propagation of a surface plasmon wave, which intrinsically has unusual transverse spin, determines a scattering direction of spin-carrying photons. This spin-orbit coupling effect is an optical analogue of the spin injection in solid-state spintronic devices (inverse spin Hall effect) and may be important for optical information processing, quantum optical technology and topological surface metrology.
Highlights
The spin Hall effect leads to the separation of electrons with opposite spins in different directions perpendicular to the electric current flow because of interaction between spin and orbital angular momenta
We describe and experimentally demonstrate the spin– orbit coupling effect manifested in the directional scattering of electromagnetic waves with opposite spins using the interaction of surface plasmon polariton (SPP) waves propagating on a metal interface with nanostructures
While in the direct photonic spin Hall effect (SHE) (PSHE), the polarization of the incident light controls the direction of the SPP excitation on a surface[2,3,4,5,6,7], in the reciprocal scenario, in analogy to the spin injection current control in solidstate spintronic devices[8], the direction of the scattered light of a given polarization is determined by the direction of the SPPs impinging at a scatterer
Summary
The spin Hall effect leads to the separation of electrons with opposite spins in different directions perpendicular to the electric current flow because of interaction between spin and orbital angular momenta. We demonstrate a reciprocal effect of spin–orbit coupling when the direction of propagation of a surface plasmon wave, which intrinsically has unusual transverse spin, determines a scattering direction of spin-carrying photons. This spin–orbit coupling effect is an optical analogue of the spin injection in solid-state spintronic devices (inverse spin Hall effect) and may be important for optical information processing, quantum optical technology and topological surface metrology. We describe and experimentally demonstrate the spin– orbit coupling effect manifested in the directional scattering of electromagnetic waves with opposite spins using the interaction of surface plasmon polariton (SPP) waves propagating on a metal interface with nanostructures. While in the direct photonic SHE (PSHE), the polarization of the incident light controls the direction of the SPP excitation on a surface[2,3,4,5,6,7], in the reciprocal scenario, in analogy to the spin injection current control in solidstate spintronic devices (inverse SHE)[8], the direction of the scattered light of a given polarization is determined by the direction of the SPPs impinging at a scatterer
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