Photonic spin Hall effect enabled refractive index sensor using weak measurements

Xinxing Zhou; Lijuan Sheng; Xiaohui Ling

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-19713-3

Photonic spin Hall effect enabled refractive index sensor using weak measurements

Sci Rep. 2018 Jan 19;8(1):1221. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-19713-3.

Authors

Xinxing Zhou¹, Lijuan Sheng², Xiaohui Ling³

Affiliations

¹ Synergetic Innovation Center for Quantum Effects and Applications, College of Physics and Information Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, 410081, China. xinxingzhou@hunnu.edu.cn.
² Synergetic Innovation Center for Quantum Effects and Applications, College of Physics and Information Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, 410081, China.
³ Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Intelligent Information Processing and Application, College of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Hengyang Normal University, Hengyang, 421002, China. xhling@hnu.edu.cn.

Abstract

In this work, we theoretically propose an optical biosensor (consists of a BK7 glass, a metal film, and a graphene sheet) based on photonic spin Hall effect (SHE). We establish a quantitative relationship between the spin-dependent shift in photonic SHE and the refractive index of sensing medium. It is found that, by considering the surface plasmon resonance effect, the refractive index variations owing to the adsorption of biomolecules in sensing medium can effectively change the spin-dependent displacements. Remarkably, using the weak measurement method, this tiny spin-dependent shifts can be detected with a desirable accuracy so that the corresponding biomolecules concentration can be determined.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't