As the fundamental and promising branch of nanophotonics, surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) with the ability of manipulating the electromagnetic field on the subwavelength scale are of interest to a wide spectrum of scientists. Composed of metallic or dielectric structures whose shape and position are carefully engineered on the metal surface, traditional SPP devices are generally static and lack tunability. Dynamical manipulation of SPP is meaningful in both fundamental research and practical applications. In this article, the achievements in dynamical SPP excitation, SPP focusing, SPP vortex, and SPP nondiffracting beams are presented. The mechanisms of dynamical SPP devices are revealed and compared, and future perspectives are discussed.

Wavefield manipulation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) is one of the fundamental subjects in nanophtonics. In this paper, based on the analyses of the plasmonic and photonic modes of the L-shaped slit samples with different widths, the dependence of the wavevector, amplitude and phase of the scattered wavefields on the slit width are experimentally determined. The excited plasmonic mode and photonic mode wavelets by arbitrary slit element is analyzed theoretically. Au ring-slits with different widths are also experimented as general slit structure to show the polarized patterns originated from the superimposition of the two modes, and the evolution of total and polarized intensity patterns with the ring-slit widths is studied systematically. The wavefield patterns of the polarization components are also calculated with the obtained components of wavefields and Huygens-Fresnel principle, and results of calculations and experiments are coincident. In addition, the results are validated by performing finite-difference time-domain simulations. The wok may enhance the efficiency of slit engineering for SPP pattern manipulations and can be a helpful reference for the fabrication of nano-optics devices.

We demonstrate that the interference pattern of the plasmonic and photonic modes can be controlled by changing the slit width of a square slit structure. Based on the analyses of the plasmonic and photonic modes of slits with different widths, we theoretically derived the expressions of wavefield generated by a square slit. A far-field scattered imaging system is utilized to collect the intensity distribution experimentally. Various interference patterns, including stripes, square-like lattice array, and diamond-like lattice array, have been observed by adjusting the slit widths. In addition, the results were validated by performing finite-difference time-domain simulations, which are consistent with the theoretical and experimental results.

Based on the Fourier transform (FT) of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), the relation between the displacement of the plasmonic field and the spatial frequency of the excitation light is theoretically established. The SPPs’ field shifts transversally or longitudinally when the spatial frequency components $f_x$ or $f_y$ are correspondingly changed. The SPPs’ focus and vortex field can be precisely located at the desired position by choosing the appropriate spatial frequency. Simulation results are in good agreement with the theoretical analyses. Dynamically tailoring the plasmonic field based on the spatial frequency modulation can find potential applications in microparticle manipulation and angular multiplexed SPP focusing and propagation.