Theory of evanescent Bessel beams with a metallic sheet.

We explain how a surface optical vortex can be created when a Bessel beam is totally reflected internally at the planar surface of a dielectric on which a metallic sheet has been deposited. A two-dimensional patterning on the surface, the strongly localized intensity distribution decays with distance vertical to the surface. The characteristics of this surface optical vortex depend on the incident beam parameters and the dielectric mismatch of the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]