Tunable and enhanced photonic spin Hall effect of a superconductor film

Abstract

Due to the small sizes of photonic spin Hall effect, its enhancement and manipulation are of significance for the development of spin photonic devices. In this work, we have investigated the photonic spin Hall effect of a superconductor slab by using transfer matrix method and angular spectrum theory. It is found that the maximum positive spin shift can be achieved in a superconductor slab with the appropriate thickness, whose magnitude is 14.8 λ at the temperature of 91 K when the beam waist is 30 λ. The magnitudes of the spin shift peak and valley are decided by the combination of Re[rs/rp] and |rp′|/|rp|. In addition, the magnitudes and the positions of the peak and valley in the spectrum of spin shift are sensitive to the temperature of the superconductor, which indicates an alternative way to control the photonic spin Hall effect. Our findings provide the possibility for realizing the controllable photonic spin Hall effect by virtue of the superconductors, which promises their potential applications in spin photonic devices.