Flexibly Enhanced Photonic Spin Hall Effect via Selective Brewster Angle

Abstract

The manipulating of photonic spin Hall effect (SHE) plays a crucial role for development of spin‐dependent nanodevices and systems. Since the photonic SHE is generally enhanced near the Brewster angle, the choice of incident angle usually has low flexibility with natural materials due to their dielectric constants. Herein, an efficient method to flexibly enhance the photonic SHE by utilizing selective Brewster angle in an anisotropic metamaterial is proposed. Through adjusting the thickness ratio of two media in metamaterial, the Brewster angle can be flexibly adjusted in a broad range (nearly 0–90°). With the selective Brewster angle, the spin‐dependent transverse shift can be enhanced at nearly arbitrary incident angles. Furthermore, based on this structure, a binary encoding system is demonstrated, realizing information conversion around incident angles. This research work provides more possibilities for applications in manipulating photonic SHE.

A Promising Mechanism for Photonic Spin Hall Effect and Refractive Index Sensing: Surface Exciton Polaritons

“…Owing to its unique physical connotations and the amazing sensitivity of photonic SHE on interface variations, [4][5][6] this effect provides a new paradigm for modulating spin-polarized photons, and thus performs tremendous potential in a wide variety of applications, such as precision metrology, optical sensing, and nano-photonic devices. [7][8][9] To further improve the applications of photonic SHE, the flexible manipulation and thus effective enhancement of this effect is highly desirable. Until now, several proposals have been put forward to flexible manipulate and then get a giant photonic SHE, based on the Brewster angle, [10] parity-time symmetric structure, [11] optical pumping on graphene, [5] photon-induced carrier injection, [12] and so on.…”

“…Until now, several proposals have been put forward to flexible manipulate and then get a giant photonic SHE, based on the Brewster angle, [10] parity-time symmetric structure, [11] optical pumping on graphene, [5] photon-induced carrier injection, [12] and so on. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15] It is worth emphasizing that, the resonance method becomes a major concern and plays crucial roles in enhancing the photonic SHE, including the surface plasmon resonance (SPR), [16] long-range SPR, [17] and guided-wave SPR. [18] Similar to surface plasmon polariton (SPP) in metals, surface exciton polariton (SEP) is also the surface wave, arising due to the interaction of electromagnetic wave and excitons (electron-hole pair) present in either inorganic or organic semiconductors.…”

Photonic Spin Hall Effect as a Highly Sensitive Refractive Index Sensing Platform for Glucose

“…[ 11 ] Generally, due to the weak spin‐orbit interaction of light, the photonic SHE has a tiny spin‐dependent splitting, usually on the sub‐wavelength scale. To enable and further promote its application, several proposals have been put forward to enhance the photonic SHE, based on the Brewster angle, [ 12,13 ] SPR, [ 14 ] ROTE, [ 15 ] optical pumping on graphene, [ 16 ] and bias‐assisted carrier injection. [ 17 ] At present, the photonic SHE has been widely applied in precision measurements, such as the determination of magneto‐optical constant of Fe films [ 18 ] and all‐optical image edge detection.…”