Near-field mapping of Airy plasmons

The field of plasmonics experiences an explosive growth with a number of developing applications in biosensing, particle manipulation and photonic circuitry. This development has motivated the emerging field of plasmon optics dealing with the manipulation and engineering of plasmon beams. Airy beams represent an important class of non-diffracting wavepackets [1] which evolution in space (or time) resembles curved trajectories. While known for decades in several fields of physics, the optical Airy beams have only recently been observed experimentally [2]. Importantly, for one-dimensional wavepackets, such as surface plasmon waves, the Airy beams represent the only possible class of non-diffracting beams. Very recently it was predicted theoretically [3] that one-dimensional self-accelerating beams can exist in the form of surface Airy plasmons, however such plasmons have never been demonstrated experimentally. Here we present the first experimental generation and direct observation of Airy plasmons on the surface of a gold metal film.