Observation of intrinsic chiral bound states in the continuum

Photons with spin angular momentum possess intrinsic chirality, which underpins many phenomena including nonlinear optics , quantum optics , topological photonics and chiroptics . Intrinsic chirality is weak in natural materials, and recent theoretical proposals aimed to enlarge circular dichroism b...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 2023-01, Vol.613 (7944), p.474-478
Main Authors: Chen, Yang, Deng, Huachun, Sha, Xinbo, Chen, Weijin, Wang, Ruize, Chen, Yu-Hang, Wu, Dong, Chu, Jiaru, Kivshar, Yuri S, Xiao, Shumin, Qiu, Cheng-Wei
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Angular momentum
Anisotropy
Chirality
Circular dichroism
Dichroism
Glass substrates
Light
Light sources
Magnetic fields
Metasurfaces
Nonlinear optics
Optics
Photons
Quantum optics
Radiation
Symmetry
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Summary:Photons with spin angular momentum possess intrinsic chirality, which underpins many phenomena including nonlinear optics , quantum optics , topological photonics and chiroptics . Intrinsic chirality is weak in natural materials, and recent theoretical proposals aimed to enlarge circular dichroism by resonant metasurfaces supporting bound states in the continuum that enhance substantially chiral light-matter interactions. Those insightful works resort to three-dimensional sophisticated geometries, which are too challenging to be realized for optical frequencies . Therefore, most of the experimental attempts showing strong circular dichroism rely on false/extrinsic chirality by using either oblique incidence or structural anisotropy . Here we report on the experimental realization of true/intrinsic chiral response with resonant metasurfaces in which the engineered slant geometry breaks both in-plane and out-of-plane symmetries. Our result marks, to our knowledge, the first observation of intrinsic chiral bound states in the continuum with near-unity circular dichroism of 0.93 and a high quality factor exceeding 2,663 for visible frequencies. Our chiral metasurfaces may lead to a plethora of applications in chiral light sources and detectors, chiral sensing, valleytronics and asymmetric photocatalysis.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/s41586-022-05467-6