Holograms for power-efficient excitation of optical surface waves

A method for effective excitation of optical surface waves based on holography principles has been proposed. For a particular example of excitation of a plasmonic wave in a dielectric layer on metal the efficiency of proposed volume holograms in the dielectric layer has been analyzed in comparison with optimized periodic gratings in the dielectric layer. Conditions when the holograms are considerably more efficient than the gratings have been found out. In addition, holograms recorded in two iterations have been proposed and studied. Such holograms are substantially more efficient than the optimized periodic gratings for all incidence angles of an exciting Gaussian beam. The proposed method is universal: it can be extended for efficient excitation of different types of optical surface waves and optical waveguide modes.