Handedness-sensitive emission of surface plasmon polaritons by elliptical nanohole ensembles

We report handedness-sensitive surface plasmon polariton (SPP) emission in mirror-symmetric ensembles of elliptical nanoholes made in a thin gold film. It is found by means of rigorous calculations and scanning near-field optical microscopy that SPP excitation direction depends on the direction of circularly polarized illumination E-vector rotation. An analytical model based on anisotropic polarizability of each nanohole is presented. Both the experimental and calculated results are in agreement with Curie's principle, and contribute to better understanding of symmetry in plasmonics.