Retrieving the axial position of fluorescent light emitting spots by shearing interferometry.

A method for the depth-resolved detection of fluorescent radiation based on imaging of an interference pattern of two intersecting beams and shearing interferometry is presented. The illumination setup provides the local addressing of the excitation of fluorescence and a coarse confinement of the excitation volume in axial and lateral directions. The reconstruction of the depth relies on the measurement of the phase of the fluorescent wave fronts.

Depolarization of a randomly distributed plasmonic meander metasurface characterized by Mueller matrix spectroscopic ellipsometry.

Metallic nanostructures offer efficient solutions in polarization control with a very low thickness. In this report, we investigate the optical properties of a nano-fabricated plasmonic pseudo-depolarizer using Mueller matrix spectroscopic ellipsometry in transmission configuration. The depolarizer is composed of 256 square cells, each containing a periodically corrugated metallic film with random orientation.

Polarization scramblers with plasmonic meander-type metamaterials.

Due to plasmonic excitations, metallic meander structures exhibit an extraordinarily high transmission within a well-defined pass band. Within this frequency range, they behave like almost ideal linear polarizers, can induce large phase retardation between s- and p-polarized light and show a high polarization conversion efficiency. Due to these properties, meander structures can interact very effectively with polarized light.

Design of high-transmission metallic meander stacks with different grating periodicities for subwavelength-imaging applications.

When replacing a bulk negative index material (NIM) with two resonant surfaces that allow for surface plasmon polariton (SPP) propagation it is possible to recreate the same near-field imaging effects as with Pendry's perfect lens. We show that a metallic meander structure is perfectly suited as such a resonant surface due to the tunability of the short (SRSPP) and long range surface plasmon (LRSPP) frequencies by means of geometrical variation. Furthermore, the Fano-type pass band between the SRSPP and LRSPP frequencies of a single meander sheet retains its dominant role when being stacked.