title: Observation of spin Hall effect in photon tunneling via weak measurements.
abstract: Photonic spin Hall effect (SHE) manifesting itself as spin-dependent splitting escapes detection in previous photon tunneling experiments due to the fact that the induced beam centroid shift is restricted to a fraction of wavelength. In this work, we report on the first observation of this tiny effect in photon tunneling via weak measurements based on preselection and postselection technique on the spin states. We find that the spin-dependent splitting is even larger than the potential barrier thickness when spin-polarized photons tunneling through a potential barrier. This photonic SHE is attributed to spin-redirection Berry phase which can be described as a consequence of the spin-orbit coupling. These findings provide new insight into photon tunneling effect and thereby offer the possibility of developing spin-based nanophotonic applications.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Spin Photonics, School of Physics and Electronics, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China.
authors.forename: Xinxing
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: SZU-NUS Collaborative Innovation Center for Optoelectronic Science &Technology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China.
authors.forename: Xiaohui
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ling
authors.affiliation: SZU-NUS Collaborative Innovation Center for Optoelectronic Science &Technology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China.
authors.forename: Zhiyou
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Spin Photonics, School of Physics and Electronics, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China.
authors.forename: Hailu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Spin Photonics, School of Physics and Electronics, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China.
authors.forename: Shuangchun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wen