Simulation and experimental observation of tunable photonic nanojet and photonic hook upon asymmetric illumination of a mesoscale cylinder with mask

Abstract: In this letter, we report on numerical study, fabrication and experimental observations of tunable photonic nanojet and photonic hook. Here, the curved photonic nanojets (photonic hooks) are generated by single mesoscale microcylinder that we fabricated from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), upon its boundary illumination and adjustable area at an incident wavelength of {\lambda} = 405 nm. Experimental observations were conducted for PDMS microcylinder of diameter d = 5 {\mu}m deposited on a silicon substrate with the aluminum mask. Measurements were performed with a scanning optical microscope. Our experimental results are in good agreement with numerical predictions performed with the finite-difference time-domain method. The observed the full widths at half-maximum of photonic hooks are 0.48{\lambda}, 0.56{\lambda}, and 0.76{\lambda} for tilt angles of {\theta} = 0{\deg}, 5.7{\deg}, and 20.1{\deg} respectively, at the mask heights of h = 0, 0.25d and 0.5d, respectively, displaying the specificities of the field localization. These photonic hooks have great potential in complex manipulation such as super-resolution imaging, surface fabrication, and optomechanical manipulation in curved trajectories smaller than wavelength.