Unambiguous definition of handedness for locally-chiral light

Abstract

Synthetic chiral light fields were recently introduced as a novel source of chirality [Ayuso et al. Nat. Phot. 13, 866 (2019)]. This locally-chiral light spans a three-dimensional polarization that plots a chiral trajectory in space-time, leading to huge nonlinear chiral signals upon interactions with chiral media. The degree of chirality of this new form of light was defined, characterized, and shown to be proportional to the chiral signal conversion efficiency. However, the sign of the light's chirality - its 'handedness' - has not yet been defined. Standard definitions of helicity are inapplicable for locally-chiral light due to its complex three-dimensional structure. Here, we define an unambiguous handedness for locally-chiral fields and employ it in practical calculations.

arXiv comment7 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (18)

• Photonic Floquet Topological Insulators
• Optical skyrmions in evanescent electromagnetic fields
• Light with a self-torque: extreme-ultraviolet beams with time-varying orbital angular momentum
• Symmetries and selection rules in Floquet systems: application to harmonic generation in nonlinear optics
• Locally and globally chiral fields for ultimate control of chiral light matter interaction
• Spatio-temporal optical vortices
• Chirality and angular momentum in optical radiation
• Knotting fractional-order knots with the polarization state of light
• Objects of maximum electromagnetic chirality
• Optical chirality in high harmonic generation
• Conservation of torus-knot angular momentum in high-order harmonic generation
• Lipkin's conservation law, Noether's theorem, and the relation to optical helicity
• Weaving knotted vector fields with tunable helicity
• Linked and knotted beams of light, conservation of helicity and the flow of null electromagnetic fields
• Detecting multiple chirality centers in chiral molecules with high harmonic generation
• Time-Harmonic Optical Chirality in Inhomogeneous Space
• Strong chiral dichroism in above threshold ionization and ionization rates from locally-chiral light
• Multi-scale dynamical symmetries and selection rules in nonlinear optics

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Ultrafast chirality: the road to efficient chiral measurements
• The Application of Tailored Fields for Studying Chirality and Symmetry
• Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: Marginalisation over redshift distribution uncertainties using ranking of discrete realisations
• The SZ flux-mass ($Y$-$M$) relation at low halo masses: improvements with symbolic regression and strong constraints on baryonic feedback
• An empirical approach to model selection: weak lensing and intrinsic alignments
• Magnetoelectric-field electrodynamics: Search for magnetoelectric point scatterers
• Tracking chirality in photoelectron circular dichroism