The localized properties of surface plasmons (SPs) and surface waves can be measured with a modified confocal microscope. An interference signal arises from a locally generated reference close to normal incidence and the beam that forms the surface wave. A spatial light modulator can impose different phase shifts on the part of the incident light to recover the properties of the SP. We report a Hilbert transform method to recover the wavenumber with a single shot. The method is faster and potentially less expensive than previous approaches. The signal-to-noise ratio is equivalent to the phase-stepping method. The signal processing necessary to condition the signal is described.

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Objective-coupled surface plasmon microscopy (SPM) possesses extremely high similarity with conventional optical microscopy (OM) in both configuration and theoretical model (graphic abstract (a)). And there is a common misunderstanding in SPM that all the three polarization components Ex, Ey, and Ez of the focused beam contribute to excitation of SPs, similar as the situation in OM that all the polarization components generate image contrast. The present work clarifies that 'only Ez excites SPs' for the first time. We theoretically prove this issue and further give related phenomena about selffocusing and resolution of SPM (graphic abstract (b)) as evidences.

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