Work

Formation of chiral fields in a symmetric environment

Year: 2012

Type: article

Abstract: Chiral fields, i. e., electromagnetic fields with nonvanishing optical chirality, can occur next to symmetric nanostructures without geometrical chirality illuminated with linearly polarized light at normal incidence. A simple dipole model is utilized to explain this behavior theoretically. Illuminated with circularly polarized light, the chiral near-fields are still dominated by the distributions found for the linear polarization but show additional features due to the optical chirality of the incident light. Rotating the angle of linear polarization introduces more subtle changes to the distribution of optical chirality. Using our findings, we propose a novel scheme to obtain chiroptical far-field response using linearly polarized light, which could be utilized for applications such as optical enantiomer sensing.

Source: Optics Express

DOI: 10.1364/oe.20.026326

Authors: Martin Schäferling, Xinghui Yin, Harald Giessen

Institutions: University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart Center for Simulation Science

Language: English

Topic: Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications

Subfield: Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

Field: Materials Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,532

Funders: Baden-Württemberg Stiftung, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung