Quantization of electromagnetic modes and angular momentum on plasmonic nanowires*

Abstract

Quantum theory of surface plasmons is very important for studying the interactions between light and different metal nanostructures in nanoplasmonics. In this work, using the canonical quantization method, the SPPs on nanowires and their orbital and spin angular momentums are investigated. The results show that the SPPs on nanowire carry both orbital and spin momentums during propagation. Later, the result is applied to the plasmonic nanowire waveguide to show the agreement of the theory. The study is helpful for the nano wire based plasmonic interactions and the quantum information based optical circuit in the future.

Theoretical research on the transverse spin of structured optical fields inside a waveguide

“…[1] Interestingly enough, in addition to the spin of photons in the conventional sense, there is an intriguing transverse spin that was first studied in 2012 by Bliokh and Nori, [2] where the term transverse means that the spin is orthogonal to the mean propagation direction of a structured optical field. Up to now, people have studied the transverse spin of evanescent waves, focused beams, and two-wave interference, [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] and have found important applications in spin-dependent unidirectional optical interfaces. [9,10,13,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] Similar counterparts of which have been found universally in other wave systems, such as acoustic and elastic waves.…”