Polarization-Controlled Plasmonic Structured Illumination

Structured light in the subwavelength scale is important for a broad range of applications ranging from lithography to imaging. Of particular importance is the ability to dynamically shift the pattern of the fields, which has led to the development of structured illumination microscopy. Further extension of structured illumination to plasmonic systems has enabled imaging beyond diffraction limit. However, structured illumination usually requires complicated optical setups entailing moving mechanical parts. Here a polarization tunable structured plasmonic field (SPF) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The SPF is formed by surface plasmon interference (SPI) generated by a fishbone-shaped metasurface on a thin gold film. Importantly, the SPF can be continuously shifted by merely varying the linear polarization state of an incident beam. The precise control of the fringes of structured illumination and elimination of mechanical control will have great potential in subdiffractional imaging for practical applications.