Vortex Circular Dichroism: An experimental technique to assess the scalar/vectorial regime of diffraction

In classical electrodynamics, light-matter interactions are modelled using Maxwell equations. The solution of Maxwell equations, which is typically given by means of the electric and magnetic field, is vectorial in nature. Yet it is well known that light-matter interactions can be approximately described in a scalar (polarization independent) way for many optical applications. While the accuracy of the scalar approximation can be theoretically computed, to the best of our knowledge, it has never been determined experimentally. Here, we introduce Vortex Circular Dichroism ( VCD), an optical measurement that has the required features to assess the vectoriality of diffraction.

VCD is measured as the differential transmission (or absorption) of left and right circularly polarized vortex beams. We test the VCD measurement with two different systems: i) an experimental set of single circular nano-apertures drilled in a gold film with diameters ranging from 150 to 1950 nm; and ii) a theoretical set of golden spheres with the same diameters as the nano-apertures.

We observe that in both systems, VCD > 0 for smaller diameters, VCD ≲ 0 for intermediate values and VCD ≈ 0 for larger values of the diameter. Furthermore, the simulations show that a diffraction process characterized by a VCD ≈ 0 ( VCD ≠ 0) is polarization-independent (polarization-dependent). As a result, we relate VCD ≠ 0 to a vectorial diffraction, and VCD ≈ 0 to a scalar one.

Overall, our results show compelling evidence that it is possible to experimentally assess the scalar/vectorial regime of a diffraction process, and that the VCD technique possesses the required features to measure the vectoriality of diffraction processes involving plasmonic cylindrically symmetric structures.