Reading the orbital angular momentum of light using plasmonic nanoantennas

Abstract

Orbital angular momentum of light has recently been recognized as a new degree of freedom to encode information in quantum communication using light pulses. Methods to extract this information include reversing the process by which such twisted light was created in the first place or interference with other beams. Here we propose an alternative new way to directly read out the extra information encoded in twisted light using plasmonic nanoantennas by converting the information about the orbital angular momentum of light into spectral information using bright and dark modes. Exemplarily considering rotation-symmetric nanorod nanoantennas, we show that their scattering cross section is sensitive to the value of the orbital angular momentum combined with the polarization of an incident twisted light beam. Explaining the twist dependence of the excited modes with a new analytical model, our results pave the way to twisted light nanoplasmonics, which is of central importance for future on-chip communication using orbital angular momentum of light.