Selective Excitation of Plasmon Resonances with Cylindrical Vector Beams

We use a rigorous group theoretical method to identify a class of cylindrical vector beams that can selectively excite the plasmon modes of axially symmetric plasmonic structures. Our choice of the single V-point cylindrical vector beams as the basis to decompose cylindrical beams dramatically simplifies the symmetry analysis in the group theory framework. With numerical simulations, we demonstrate that any plasmon eigenmodes, bright or dark, can be selectively excited individually or jointly. A straightforward protocol to get access to the desired plasmon mode using symmetry coupling is presented.