Observation of intrinsic chiral bound states in the continuum

Abstract

Photons with spin angular momentum possess intrinsic chirality which underpins many phenomena including nonlinear optics1, quantum optics2, topological photonics3 and chiroptics4. Intrinsic chirality is weak in natural materials, and recent theoretical proposals5-7 aimed to enlarge circular dichroism by resonant metasurfaces supporting bound states in the continuum that enhance substantially chiral light-matter interaction. Those insightful works resort to three-dimensional sophisticated geometries, which are too challenging to be realized for optical frequencies8. Therefore, most of the experimental attempts9-11 showing strong circular dichroism rely on false/extrinsic chirality by employing either oblique incidence9, 10 or structural anisotropy11. Here, we report on the experimental realization of true/intrinsic chiral response with resonant metasurfaces where the engineered slant geometry breaks both in-plane and out-of-plane symmetries. Our result marks the first observation of intrinsic chiral bound states in the continuum with near-unity chiral dichroism of 0.93 and record-high quality factor exceeding 2663 for visible frequencies. Our chiral metasurfaces promise a plethora of applications in chiral light sources and detectors, chiral sensing, valleytronics and asymmetric photocatalysis.

References in corpus (7)

• Chiral Quantum Optics
• Chiral plasmonics
• Planar chiral metasurfaces with maximal tunable chiroptical response driven by bound states in the continuum
• Metasurfaces with maximum chirality empowered by bound states in the continuum
• Optical Activity of Planar Achiral Metamaterials
• Spin-Preserving Chiral Photonic Crystal Mirror
• Quasi Bound States in the Continuum with Few Unit Cells of Photonic Crystal Slab

Cited by in corpus (31)

• Applications of Bound States in the Continuum in Photonics
• Edge detection imaging by quasi-bound states in the continuum
• Nonlinear chiral metaphotonics
• Enhanced sum-frequency generation from etchless lithium niobate empowered by dual quasi-bound states in the continuum
• Observation of robust intrinsic C points generation with magneto-optical bound states in the continuum
• Janus Bound States in the Continuum with Asymmetric Topological Charges
• Spin-Orbit-Locking Chiral Bound States in the Continuum
• Observation of Photonic Chiral Flatbands
• High Discrimination Ratio, Broadband Circularly Polarized Light Photodetector Using Dielectric Achiral Nanostructures
• Extremely intrinsic chirality in two-dimensional planar waveguide grating induced by quasi-bound states in the continuum
• Substrate-induced maximum optical chirality of planar dielectric structures
• Vibrational coupling to quasi-bound states in the continuum under tailored coupling conditions
• Universal imprinting of chirality with chiral light by employing plasmonic metastructures
• Metasurface-based hybrid optical cavities for chiral sensing
• Chiral photonic super-crystals based on helical van der Waals homostructures
• Giant and Flexible Toroidal Circular Dichroism from Planar Chiral Metasurface
• Atomic-scale on-demand photon polarization manipulation with high-efficiency for integrated photonic chips
• Recovery of topologically robust merging bound states in the continuum in photonic structures with broken symmetry
• QED based on eight-dimensional spinorial wave equation of the electromagnetic field and the emergence of quantum gravity
• Nanometer-resolution 3D Tomographic and Vectorial Near-field Imaging in Dielectric Optical Resonators
• Angle multifunctional dichroism in metasurfaces
• Spintwistronics: Photonic bilayer topological lattices tuning extreme spin-orbit interactions
• Chiral Raman coupling for spin-orbit coupling in ultracold atomic gases
• Gigahertz modulation of a fully dielectric nonlocal metasurface
• Nearfield Vortex Dynamics of Supercell Bloch Modes
• Polariton Chern Bands in 2D Photonic Crystals Beyond Dirac Cones
• Light-cone-proximal quasi-BICs for chiral lasing at grazing angles
• Giant and Rapidly Switching Intrinsic Chirality Enabled by Toroidal Quasi-Bound States in the Continuum
• Phase fields in momentum space of photonic crystal slabs
• Complex Band Structure and Bound States in the Continuum: A Unified Theoretical Framework
• Chiral lasing via broken parity-time symmetry in bound-state-in-the-continuum metasurfaces