Ultra-narrow line width polarization-insensitive filter using a symmetry-breaking selective plasmonic metasurface

Plasmonic metasurfaces provide unprecedented control of the properties of light. By designing symmetry-breaking nanoholes in a metal sheet and engineering the optical properties of the metal using geometry, highly selective transmission and polarisation control of light is obtained. To date such plasmonic filters have exhibited broad (> 200 nm) transmission linewidths in the NIR and as such are unsuitable for applications requiring narrow passbands, e.g. multi-spectral imaging. Here we present a novel sub-wavelength elliptical and circular nanohole array in a metallic film that simultaneously exhibits high transmission efficiency, polarisation insensitivity and narrow linewidth. The experimentally obtained linewidth is 79 nm with a transmission efficiency of 44%. By examining the electric and magnetic field distributions for various incident polarisations at the transmission peak we show that the narrowband characteristics are due to a Fano resonance. Good agreement is obtained between the experimental data, simulations and analytical calculations. Our design can be modified to operate in other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum and these filters may be integrated with suitable detectors such as photodiodes and single photon avalanche diode (SPAD) arrays