Ultrafast spatiotemporal control of the femtosecond Bessel surface plasmon polariton by a chirped laser pulse

Abstract

Nondiffracting Bessel surface plasmon polariton (SPP) beam, which has unique properties of non-divergence, self-healing and straight trajectory, is potential to the fields of on-chip interconnect circuits and near-field optical trapping. However, it remains a significant challenge to achieve the spatiotemporal manipulation of nondiffracting Bessel SPP pulse in nanometer spatial and femtosecond temporal scale. Here, we propose a novel method of ultrafast spatiotemporal control of Bessel SPP pulses at the nano-femtosecond spatial–temporal scale. This on-chip plasmonic device can achieve the wavelength-based manipulation of the Bessel SPP beam with a high extinction ratio. The Bessel SPP pulse that develops in the femtosecond time scale in this device is presented. Importantly, we also demonstrate a solution for ultrafast spatiotemporal control of Bessel SPP pulses on the femtosecond time scale by controlling the chirp of the incident ultrafast laser pulse. Additionally, a higher coupling efficiency of the Bessel SPP into the waveguide than that of a plane SPP is demonstrated. The sequential coupling to the dielectric waveguides with femtosecond interval of Bessel SPP pulses is also achieved. This work offers great promise in applications such as high-speed, highly integrated nanophotonic devices, on-chip interconnect circuits and ultrafast beam shaping.