title: Polarization tomography of metallic nanohole arrays.
abstract: We report polarization tomography experiments on metallic nanohole arrays with square and hexagonal symmetry. As a main result we find that a fully polarized input beam is partly depolarized after transmission through a nanohole array. This loss of polarization coherence is found to be anisotropic; i.e., it depends on the polarization state of the input beam. The depolarization is ascribed to a combination of two factors: (i) the nonlocal response of the array as a result of surface-plasmon propagation and (ii) the non-plane-wave nature of a practical input beam.
authors.affiliation: Huygens Laboratory, Leiden University, PO Box 9504, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands. erwin@molphys.leidenuniv.nl
authors.forename: Erwin
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Altewischer
authors.forename: Cyriaque
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Genet
authors.forename: Martin P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: van Exter
authors.forename: J P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Woerdman
authors.forename: Paul F A
authors.initials: PF
authors.lastname: Alkemade
authors.forename: Arjan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: van Zuuk
authors.forename: Emile W J M
authors.initials: EW
authors.lastname: van der Drift