Near-Field Interference for the Unidirectional Excitation of Electromagnetic Guided Modes

Abstract

Controlling Light Propagation Surface plasmons are light-induced collective electronic excitations in a metal that offer the possibility of manufacturing optoelectronic devices at nanometer scale. Before such shrinking can be achieved, the propagation direction and lifetime of the plasmonic excitations have to be controlled (see the Perspective by Miroshnichenko and Kivshar ). Rodríguez-Fortuño et al. (p. 328 ) show how this is done using polarized light. Alternatively, using an array of metallic nanoantennae (in this case, slits) patterned into a thin gold film, Lin et al. (p. 331 ) present a further improvement on current plasmonic coupling schemes that has the potential to encode information contained in both the intensity and polarization of light.