Nonlocal metasurface for dark-field edge emission
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Updated: Jul 25, 2026

Determination of the Excitation and Coupling Rates Between Light Emitters and Surface Plasmon Polaritons
Published on: July 21, 2018
Jin Yao1, Wei-Lun Hsu2, Yao Liang1
1Department of Electrical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Abstract:
Nonlocal effects originating from interactions between neighboring meta-atoms introduce additional degrees of freedom for peculiar characteristics of metadevices, such as enhancement, selectivity, and spatial modulation. However, they are generally difficult to manipulate because of the collective responses of multiple meta-atoms. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the nonlocal metasurface to realize the spatial modulation of dark-field emission. Plasmonic asymmetric split rings (ASRs) are designed to simultaneously excite local dipole resonance and nonlocal quasi-bound states in the continuum and spatially extended modes. With one type of unit, nonlocal effects are tailored by varying array periods. ASRs at the metasurface's edge lack sufficient interactions, resulting in stronger dark-field scattering and thus edge emission properties of the metasurface. Pixel-level spatial control is demonstrated by simply erasing some units, providing more flexibility than conventional local metasurfaces. This work paves the way for manipulating nonlocal effects and facilitates applications in optical trapping and sorting at the nanoscale.
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