Resonant evanescent complex fields on dielectric multilayers.

Complex light fields, including evanescent Bessel beams, can be generated at dielectric interfaces by means of oil-immersion optics operating in total internal reflection conditions. Here we report on the observation of evanescent complex fields produced on a dielectric multilayer through the interference of surface modes resonantly sustained by the multilayer itself. The coupling to surface modes is attained by modifying the wavefront of an incident laser beam in such a way that the resulting intensity distribution in k-space matches the dispersion of the surface mode. The phase of surface modes can be further controlled, and two-dimensional vortex beams can also be produced according to the same working principle.