Generation of Bloch surface beams with arbitrarily designed phases

Abstract

We proposed a new manipulation method for Bloch surface waves that can almost arbitrarily modulate the lateral phase through in-plane wave-vector matching. The Bloch surface beam is generated by a laser beam from a glass substrate incident on a carefully designed nanoarray structure, which can provide the missing momentum between the two beams and set the required initial phase of the Bloch surface beam. An internal mode was used as a channel between the incident and surface beams to improve the excitation efficiency. Using this method, we successfully realized and demonstrated the properties of various Bloch surface beams, including subwavelength-focused, self-accelerating Airy, and diffraction-free collimated beams. This manipulation method, along with the generated Bloch surface beams, will facilitate the development of two-dimensional optical systems and benefit potential applications of lab-on-chip photonic integrations.