Ultrafast vector imaging of plasmonic skyrmion dynamics with deep subwavelength resolution

Abstract

Plasmonic skyrmions are an optical manifestation of topological defects in a continuous vector field. Identifying them requires characterization of the vector structure of the electromagnetic near field on thin metal films. Here we introduce time-resolved vector microscopy that creates movies of the electric field vectors of surface plasmons with subfemtosecond time steps and a 10-nanometer spatial scale. We image complete time sequences of propagating surface plasmons as well as plasmonic skyrmions, resolving all vector components of the electric field and their time dynamics, thus demonstrating dynamic spin-momentum coupling as well as the time-varying skyrmion number. The ability to image linear optical effects in the spin and phase structures of light in the single-nanometer range will allow for entirely novel microscopy and metrology applications.