Surface Plasmon Excitation and Localization by Metal-Coated Axicon Prism

Abstract

Collimated Gaussian beams are efficiently localized at the apex of a metal-coated axicon prism by surface plasmon excitations. We observed the light scattered at the apex and the light reflected by the prism. Intense scattered light was observed with the radial polarization incidence. Further, each incidence of the radial, azimuthal, and linear polarizations provided field distributions of bright and dark intensities in the reflected images according to the surface plasmon excitation. We have demonstrated that surface plasmon waves are excited at the sides of the prism in the Kretschmann configuration and that they converge to its apex.

Keywords

• surface plasmon polaritons
• Kretschmann configuration
• radial polarization
• near-field optics
• metallic thin film