Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) can be excited at the interface of a metal layer and a dielectric layer by various methods. If an inhomogeneity of permittivity with a curvilinear boundary is created in the metal layer by the external electric field, the incident SPPs and the reflected ones from this inhomogeneity interfere with one another. A nonrectangular vortex lattice appears when such SPP interference occurs, and the lattice configuration can be controlled by varying the external electric field. Based on control of the SPP vortex lattice and reading out of the vortex localization, the plasmon logic gates "AND," "OR," and "NOT" can be realized. These logic gates represent a functionally complete basis for logical operations in processors operating at optical frequencies.

The TM-mode of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) can be excited at the interface of a metal layer and a dielectric medium. The E-mode of the SPPs is excited due to reflection of the TM-mode from the boundary of inhomogeneity in the metal layer. The interference of these modes leads to the formation of the SPP vortices in the points of minima of the mode field in some components of the Poynting vector of the SPP. The SPP interference vortex pattern changes depending on the curvature of the boundary of inhomogeneity in the metal layer, and the vortices appear and disappear in the components of the Poynting vector.

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We theoretically investigate the formation of a plasmon polariton vortex lattice on a metal surface following the interference of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs). The plasmon polariton vortex lattice is formed by the interference of the SPP transverse-magnetic mode (TM-mode) and electric mode (E-mode) in the presence of the inhomogeneity with a curvilinear boundary on the surface of the metal layer. The SPP vortex lattice can be controlled by changing the configuration of the boundary. Weak nonlinearity of the metal permittivity does not change the interference pattern, but it increases the propagation length of the SPPs and, therefore, the area of the vortex lattice too.

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