On-chip detection of spin-selective routing in plasmonic nanocircuits

Abstract

On-chip manipulating and controlling the temporal and spatial evolution of light is of crucial importance for information processing in future planar integrated nanophotonics. The spin and orbital angular momentum of light, which can be treated independently in classical macroscopic geometrical optics, appear to be coupled on subwavelength scales. We use spin-orbit interactions in a plasmonic achiral nano-coupler to unidirectionally excite surface plasmon polariton modes propagating in seamlessly integrated plasmonic slot waveguides. The spin-dependent flow of light in the proposed nanophotonic circuit allows on-chip electrical detection of the spin state of incident photons by integrating two germanium-based plasmonic-waveguide photodetectors. Consequently, our device serves as a compact ($\sim$ 6 $\times$ 18 $\mu$m${}^2$) electrical sensor for photonic spin Hall dynamics. The demonstrated configuration opens new avenues for developing highly-integrated polarization-controlled optical devices that would exploit the spin-degree of freedom for manipulating and controlling subwavelength optical modes in nanophotonic systems.

arXiv comment15 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (11)

• Topological Photonics
• Spin-orbit interactions of light
• Photonic Analogue of Two-dimensional Topological Insulators and Helical One-Way Edge Transport in Bi-Anisotropic Metamaterials
• Chiral Quantum Optics
• Utilization of photon orbital angular momentum in the low-frequency radio domain
• Quantum spin Hall effect of light
• Coriolis Effect in Optics: Unified Geometric Phase and Spin-Hall Effect
• Macroscopic direct observation of optical spin-dependent lateral forces and left-handed torques
• Unidirectional sub-diffraction waveguiding based on optical spin-orbit coupling in subwavelength plasmonic waveguides
• Directing nanoscale optical flows by coupling photon spin to plasmon extrinsic angular momentum
• Ultra-compact branchless plasmonic interferometers

Cited by in corpus (6)

• On-Chip Spin-Orbit Controlled Excitation of Quantum Emitters Coupled to Hybrid Plasmonic Nanocircuits
• Plasmonic monolithic lithium niobate directional coupler switches
• A single-crystalline silver plasmonic circuit for visible quantum emitters
• High-speed plasmonic electro-optic beam deflectors
• Interferometric near-field characterization of plasmonic slot waveguides in single- and poly-crystalline gold films
• Spin-orbit implementation of Solovay-Kitaev decomposition of single-qubit channels