The photonic spin Hall effect (SHE) is generally believed to be a result of an effective spin-orbit coupling, which describes the mutual influence of the spin (polarization) and the trajectory of the light beam. The photonic SHE holds great potential for precision metrology owing to the fact that the spin-dependent splitting in photonic SHE are sensitive to the physical parameter variations of different systems. Remarkably, using the weak measurements, this tiny spin-dependent shifts can be detected with the desirable accuracy so that the corresponding physical parameters can be determined. Here, we will review some of our works on using photonic SHE for precision metrology, such as measuring the thickness of nanometal film, identifying the graphene layers, detecting the strength of axion coupling in topological insulators, and determining the magneto-optical constant of magnetic film.

Date Published: 28 August 2014
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 9167, Spintronics VII, 91670I (28 August 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2060312

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9167:
Spintronics VII
Henri-Jean Drouhin; Jean-Eric Wegrowe; Manijeh Razeghi, Editor(s)