Plasmon coherence determination by nanoscattering

We present a simple and robust protocol to recover the second-order field correlations of polychromatic, statistically stationary surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) from a spectrum measurement in the far zone of a dipolar nanoscatterer. The recovered correlations carry comprehensive information about the spectral, spatial, and temporal coherence of the SPPs. We also introduce and exemplify for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, the two-point Stokes parameters associated with partially coherent SPP fields. (C) 2017 Optical Society of Americ