Beaming of helical light from plasmonic vortices via adiabatically   tapered nanotip
  We demonstrate the generation of far-field propagating optical beams with a desired orbital angular momentum by using a smooth optical mode transformation between a plasmonic vortex and free space Laguerre-Gaussian modes. This is obtained by means of an adiabatically tapered gold tip surrounded by a spiral slit. The proposed physical model, backed up by the numerical study, brings about an optimized structure which is fabricated by using highly reproducible secondary electron lithography technique. Optical measurements of the structure excellently agree with the theoretically predicted far-field distributions. This architecture provides a unique platform for a localized excitation of plasmonic vortices followed by its beaming. 
Denis Garoli, Pierfrancesco Zilio, Yuri Gorodetski, Francesco Tantussi   and Francesco De Angelis
physics.optics