Plasmonic Generation of Spatiotemporal Optical Vortices

Abstract

We investigate the transformation of spatiotemporal optical signals using the Kretschmann configuration with an additional dielectric layer, which can be referred to as the “generalized Kretschmann setup”. We demonstrate that in the considered structure, it is possible to achieve the condition of generating a reflected optical pulse containing a spatiotemporal optical vortex, which appears to be impossible in the conventional Kretschmann configuration. High-quality generation of spatiotemporal optical vortices using the investigated structure was confirmed by the results of rigorous numerical simulations. The obtained results are promising for applications in analog optical computing and optical information processing systems.

Keywords

• plasmonics
• optical computing
• optical vortex
• Kretschmann configuration