2024/09/18 by Giulia Carini, Richarda Niemann, Carini, Giulia +7 · 1 citation
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Optics (physics.optics) #Photonic and Optical Devices #Silicon Nanostructures and Photoluminescence
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2409.12035
openalex publication_date 2024/09/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Surface phonon polaritons (SPhPs) have become a key ingredient for infrared nanophotonics, owing to their long lifetimes and the large number of polar dielectric crystals supporting them. While these evanescent modes have been thoroughly characterized by near-field mapping or far-field intensity measurements over the last decade, far-field optical experiments also providing phase information are less common. In this paper, we study surface phonon polaritons at the gallium phosphide (GaP)-air interface in the momentum domain using the Otto-type prism coupling geometry. We combine this method with spectroscopic ellipsometry to obtain both amplitude and phase information of the reflected waves across the entire reststrahlen band of GaP. By adjusting the prism-sample air gap width, we systematically study the dependence of the ellipsometry parameters on the optical coupling efficiency. In particular, we show that the combined observation of both ellipsometry parameters - amplitude and phase - provides a powerful tool for the detection of SPhPs, even in the presence of high optical losses. Finally, we theoretically study how surface phonon polariton ellipsometry can reveal the emergence of vibrational strong coupling through changes in the topology of their complex plane trajectories, opening up a new perspective on light-matter coupling.