title: Interference of conically scattered light in surface plasmon resonance.
abstract: Surface plasmon polaritons on thin metal films are a well studied phenomena when excited using prism coupled geometries such as the Kretschmann attenuated total reflection configuration. Here we describe a novel interference pattern in the conically scattered light emanating from such a configuration when illuminated by a focused beam. We observe conditions indicating only self-interference of scattered surface plasmon polaritions without any contributions from specular reflection. The spatial evolution of this field is described in the context of Fourier optics and has applications in highly sensitive surface plasmon based biosensing.
authors: Laboratory of Nanophotonics & Biosensing, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Erlangen, Germany. aaron.webster@mpl.mpg.de
authors: Aaron
authors: A
authors: Webster
authors: Frank
authors: F
authors: Vollmer