Thermal radiation from bulk disorderly placed nonresonant emitters is incoherent, broadband and isotropic. In an external magnetic field the thermal radiation from any source is circularly polarized. Here we propose a thermal radiation source which emits circularly polarized radiation and which is not placed in a magnetic field. The thermal source consists of a slab waveguide with etched chiral metasurface. Due to the absence of a mirror symmetry of the metasurface, the thermally generated electromagnetic waves become circularly polarized. In this letter we discuss the origin of this phenomenon in details. Using the Fourier modal method we analyze the eigenmodes of the structure and the emissivity spectra. We demonstrate that the degree of circular polarization in an optimized structure can be as high as 0.87.
Metasurfaces are believed as one of the best candidates in nano-optical devices, attributed to the key feasible modulation features of phase, polarization, and local field enhancement by structural designing. However, current methods of propagation- and geometric-phase modulation are interrelated between two eigen spin-states. This means that when the left-handed component phase of a beam is modulated by metasurfaces, its right-handed component phase will change accordingly, which limits the versatility of spin-decoupled applications. In this paper, we experimentally and numerically demonstrat…
Classical emulation of a ubiquitous quantum mechanical phenomenon of double-continuum Fano (DCF) interference using metasurfaces is experimentally realized by engineering the near-field interaction between two bright and one dark plasmonic modes. The competition between the bright modes, with one of them effectively suppressing the Fano interference for the orthogonal light polarization, is discovered and explained by the analytic theory of the plasmonic DCF interference, which is further applied to predicting the circularly dichroic optical field concentration by plasmonic metasurfaces.
The quantum nature of light-matter interactions in a circularly polarized vacuum field was probed by spontaneous emission from quantum dots in three-dimensional chiral photonic crystals. Due to the circularly polarized eigenmodes along the helical axis in the GaAs-based mirror-asymmetric structures we studied, we observed highly circularly polarized emission from the quantum dots. Both spectroscopic and time-resolved measurements confirmed that the obtained circularly polarized light was influenced by a large difference in the photonic density of states between the orthogonal components of the…
We studied the high-order harmonic generation (HHG) from 2D solid materials in circularly and bichromatic circularly polarized laser fields numerically by simulating the dynamics of single-active-electron processes in 2D periodic potentials. Contrary to the absence of HHG in the atomic case, circular HHGs below the bandgap with different helicities are produced from intraband transitions in solids with $C_4$ symmetry driven by circularly polarized lasers. Harmonics above the bandgap are elliptically polarized due to the interband transitions. High-order elliptically polarized harmonics can be …
The total intensity of light transmitted at non-normal incidence thorough planar metamaterials can be different for forward and backward propagation. For metamaterial patterns of different symmetries we observe this effect for circularly or linearly polarized light.
We experimentally demonstrate the efficient generation of circularly polarized pulses tunable from the vacuum to deep ultraviolet (160-380 nm) through resonant dispersive wave emission from optical solitons in a gas-filled hollow capillary fiber. In the deep ultraviolet we measure up to 13 microjoule of pulse energy, and from numerical simulations, we estimate the shortest output pulse duration to be 8.5 fs. We also experimentally verify that simply scaling the pulse energy by 3/2 between linearly and circularly polarized pumping closely reproduces the soliton and dispersive wave dynamics. Bas…
A novel method of generation and synthesis of azimuthally E-polarized vortex beams is presented. Along the axis of propagation such beams have a strong longitudinally polarized magnetic field where ideally there is no electric field. We show how these beams can be constructed through the interference of Laguerre-Gaussian beams carrying orbital angular momentum. As an example, we present a metasurface made of double-split ring slot pairs and report a good agreement between simulated and analytical results. Both a high magnetic-to-electric-field contrast ratio and a magnetic field enhancement ar…
We discovered that when circularly polarized light is obliquely incident on a two-dimensional metallic photonic crystal slabs, electrical voltage is induced perpendicularly to the incident plane. Signal sign is reversed by changing the sense of polarization or incident angle. The origin of this transverse photo-induced voltage is explained in terms of the force linear in light intensity induced by the asymmetry brought by angular momentum of incident light.
We derive expressions for the energy, linear momentum, and angular momentum content of circularly polarized Laguerre-Gaussian wave-packets propagating in free space. The vectorial nature of the electromagnetic field is taken into account, and the various consequences of paraxial approximation, which is typically invoked in theoretical treatments of the Laguerre-Gaussian beams, are examined.
We demonstrate an efficient scheme for the generation of broadband, high-energy, circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses in the deep ultraviolet through seeded degenerate four-wave mixing in stretched gas-filled hollow capillary fibers. Pumping and seeding with circularly polarized 35 fs pulses centered at 400 nm and 800 nm, respectively, we generate idler pulses centered at 266 nm with more than 25 microjoule of energy and over 95% spectrally averaged ellipticity. Even higher idler energies and broad spectra (27 nm bandwidth) can be obtained at the cost of reduced ellipticity. Our syste…
We study the no reflection condition for a planar boundary between vacuum and an isotropic chiral medium. In general chiral media, elliptically polarized waves incident at a particular angle satisfy the no reflection condition. When the wave impedance and wavenumber of the chiral medium are equal to the corresponding parameters of vacuum, one of the circularly polarized waves is transmitted to the medium without reflection or refraction for all angles of incidence. We propose a circular polarizing beam splitter as a simple application of the no reflection effect.
Multiresonant metasurfaces could enable many applications in filtering, sensing and nonlinear optics. However, developing a metasurface with more than one high-quality-factor or high-Q resonance at designated resonant wavelengths is challenging. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a plasmonic metasurface exhibiting different, narrow surface lattice resonances by exploiting the polarization degree of freedom where different lattice modes propagate along different dimensions of the lattice. The surface consists of aluminum nanostructures in a rectangular periodic lattice. The resulting surface l…
Optical forces allow manipulation of small particles and control of nanophotonic structures with light beams. Here, we describe a counter-intuitive lateral optical force acting on particles placed above a substrate, under uniform plane wave illumination without any field gradients. We show that under circularly-polarized illumination, nanoparticles experience a lateral force as a result of dipolar, spin-sensitive scattering, with a magnitude comparable to other optical forces. To this end, we rigorously calculate the force experienced by a circularly polarized dipole radiating above a surface.…
Spin-multiplexed terahertz image edge detection based on extrinsic chirality in all-dielectric metasurface
Sichuan Province Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Sensor Devices and Systems, College of Optoelectronic Engineering (Chengdu IC Valley Industrial College), Chengdu University of Information Technology（成都信息工程大学光电工程学院（成都IC谷产业学院））；Sichuan Meteorological Optoelectronic Sensor Technology and Application Engineering Research Center, Chengdu University of Information Technology（成都信息工程大学四川省气象光电传感器技术与应用工程研究中心）；School of Precision Instruments and Opto-Electronics Engineering, Tianjin University（天津大学精密仪器与光电子工程学院）
Circularly-polarized extreme UV and X-ray radiation provides valuable access to the structural, electronic and magnetic properties of materials. To date, this capability was available only at large-scale X-ray facilities such as synchrotrons. Here we demonstrate the first bright, phase-matched, extreme UV circularly-polarized high harmonics and use this new light source for magnetic circular dichroism measurements at the M-shell absorption edges of Co. We show that phase matching of circularly-polarized harmonics is unique and robust, producing a photon flux comparable to the linearly polarize…
The first scheme for quasi-phase-matching high harmonic generation of circularly polarized radiation is proposed: optical rotation quasi-phase-matching (ORQPM). In ORQPM propagation of the driving radiation in a system exhibiting circular birefringence causes its plane of polarization to rotate; by appropriately matching the period of rotation to the coherence length it is possible to avoid destructive interference of the generated radiation. It is shown that ORQPM is approximately 5 times more efficient than conventional QPM, and half as efficient as true phase-matching.
All optical diodes (AODs) play an important role in quantum optics and information processing, in which the information is encoded by photons. Only circularly polarized lights are able to carry the spin states of photons, which has been intensively used in quantum computing and information processing and enable new research fields, such as chiral quantum optics. An ideal AOD should be able to work with arbitrary polarizations states, including circularly polarized lights, which has not been demonstrated yet. In this paper, we theoretically demonstrate for the first time a nanophotonic AOD that…
We report on strong backward stimulated emission at 337 nm in Nitrogen gas pumped by circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses at 800 nm. A distinct dependence of the backward UV spectrum on pump laser polarization and intensity is observed, pointing to the occurrence of backward amplified spontaneous emission inside filaments. We attribute the population inversion to inelastic collision between the free electrons produced by the pump laser and neutral N2 molecules. The addition of Oxygen molecules is detrimental for the gain, reducing it to near threshold at atmospheric concentration.
We demonstrate by breaking the $C_{6}$ symmetry for higher-order at-$Γ$ bound states in the continuum (BICs) with topological charge $-2$ in photonic crystals, (i) deterministic generation of off-$Γ$ BICs from the at-$Γ$ BIC, and (ii) a variety of pair-creation and annihilation processes of circularly-polarized states with opposite topological charge and same handedness. These processes are well explained by the conservation of handedness-wise topological charges, showing topologically robustness of these phenomena. The results indicate a new control of topological aspect of far-field polariza…
Bound states in the continuum in periodic photonic systems like photonic crystal slabs are proved to be accompanied by vortex polarization singularities on the photonic bands in the momentum space. The winding structures of polarization states not only widen the field of topological physics but also show great potential that such systems could be applied in polarization manipulating. In this work, we report the phenomenon that by in-plane inversion ($C_2$) symmetry breaking, pairs of circularly polarized states could spawn from the eliminated Bound states in the continuum. Along with the appea…
Organic circularly polarized (CP) lasers have received increasing attention due to their future photoelectric applications. Here, we demonstrate a CP laser from a pure organic crystal-filled microcavity without any chiral molecules or chiral structures. Benefited from the giant anisotropy and excellent laser gain of organic crystals, optical Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling effect can be induced and is conductive to the CP laser in such microcavities. The maximum dissymmetry factor of the CP lasing with opposite helicities reached, is as high as 1.2. Our strategy may provide a new idea f…
We report the elliptically, close to circularly polarized lasing at $\hbarω= 1.473$ and 1.522 eV from an AlAs/AlGaAs Bragg microcavity with 12 GaAs quantum wells in the active region and chiral-etched upper distributed Bragg refractor under optical pump at room temperature. The advantage of using the chiral photonic crystal with a large contrast of dielectric permittivities is its giant optical activity, allowing to fabricate a very thin half-wave plate, with a thickness of the order of the emitted light wavelength, and to realize the monolithic control of circular polarization.
Helicity-dependent photocurrent delta-I has been detected successfully under experimental configuration that a circularly polarized light beam is impinged with a right angle on a cleaved sidewall of the Fe/x-AlOx/GaAs-based n-i-p double-heterostructure. The photocurrent delta-I has showed a well-defined hysteresis loop which resembles that of the magnetization of the in-plane magnetized Fe layer in the devices. The value of delta-I has been |delta-I|~0.2 nA at 5 K under the remnant magnetization state. Study on temperature dependence of the relative delta-I value at H = 0 has revealed that it …
We report on a chiral nanostructure, which we term a "butterfly nanoantenna," that, when used in a metasurface, allows the direct conversion of a linearly polarized beam into a nonlinear optical far-field of arbitrary complexity. The butterfly nanoantenna exhibits field enhancement in its gap for every incident linear polarization, which can be exploited to drive nonlinear optical emitters within the gap, for the structuring of light within a frequency range not accessible by linear plasmonics. As the polarization, phase and amplitude of the field in the gap are highly controlled, nonlinear em…
We study the negative couplings amid local resonances of photonic metasurfaces. In our analysis, we discover pseudo-spin-orbit coupled bulk modes leading to lines of circularly polarized radiation eigenstates in two-dimensional momentum space which were considered to exist only in three-dimensions. Our theoretical model is exemplified via a guided resonance dielectric metasurface that possesses Type-II Non-Hermitian diabolical points, from where the circular polarization lines emanate. The designed metasurface carries circular polarized radiation eigenstates in both the 0th and the 1st diffrac…
We present terahertz (THz) metasurfaces based on aligned rectangular graphene patches placed on top of a dielectric layer to convert the transmitted linearly polarized waves to circular or elliptical polarized radiation. Our results lead to the design of an ultrathin broadband THz quarter-wave plate. In addition, ultrathin metasurfaces based on arrays of L-shaped graphene periodic patches are demonstrated to achieve broadband cross-polarization transformation in reflection and transmission. The proposed metasurface designs have tunable responses and are envisioned to become the building blocks…
Circularly polarized extreme ultraviolet (XUV) radiation is highly interesting for investigation of chirality-sensitive light-matter interactions. Recent breakthroughs have enabled generation of such light sources via high harmonic generation (HHG) from rare gases. There is a growing interest in extending HHG medium from gases to solids, especially to 2D materials, as they hold great promise to develop ultra-compact solid-state photonic devices and provide insights into electronic properties of the materials themselves. However, HHG in graphene driven by terahertz to mid-infrared fields report…
Various schemes are presented for the generation of circularly polarized molecular high-order harmonic generation (MHOHG) from molecules. In particular it is shown that combinations of counter-rotating circularly polarized pulses produce the lowest frequency Coriolis forces with the highest frequency recollisions, thus generating new harmonics which are the source of circular polarized attosecond pulses (CPAPs). These can be used to generate circularly polarized electronic currents in molecular media on attosecond time scale. Molecular attosecond currents allow then for the generation of ultra…
We report a Keldysh-like model for the electron transition rate in dielectrics under an intense circularly polarized laser. We assume a parabolic two-band system and the Houston function as the time-dependent wave function of the valence and conduction bands. Our formula reproduces the experimental result for the ratio of the excitation rate between linear and circular polarizations for $α$-quartz. This formula can be easily introduced into simulations of nanofabrication using an intense circularly polarized laser.
We study theoretically the ultrafast electron dynamics of three-dimensional Weyl semimetals in the field of a laser pulse. For a circularly-polarized pulse, such dynamics is governed by topological resonance, which manifests itself as a specific conduction band population distribution in the vicinity of the Weyl points. The topological resonance is determined by the competition between the topological phase and the dynamic phase and depends on the handedness of a circularly polarized pulse. Also, we show that the conduction band population induced by a circularly-polarized pulse that consists …
We report here the analytical formula for the time-resolved dynamical Franz-Keldysh effect (Tr-DFKE) under circularly polarized light. We assume the Houston function as the time-dependent wave function of the parabolic two-band system. Our formula shows that the sub-cycle change of the optical properties disappears, which is a significant feature of the Tr-DFKE under linear polarized light and is different from the static Franz-Keldysh effect.
We present the concept of a magnetless Reflective Gyrotropic Spatial Isolator (RGSI) metasurface. This is a birefringent metasurface that reflects vertically polarized incident waves into a horizontally polarized waves, and absorbs horizontally polarized incident waves, hence providing isolation between the two orthogonal polarization. We first synthesize the metasurface using surface susceptibility-based Generalized Sheet Transition Conditions~(GSTCs). We then propose a mirror-backed metaparticle implementation of this metasurface, where transistor-loaded resonators provide the desired magnet…
We demonstrate arbitrary helicity control of circularly polarized light (CPL) emitted at room temperature from the cleaved side-facet of a lateral-type spin-polarized light-emitting diode (spin-LED) with two ferromagnetic electrodes in an anti-parallel magnetization configuration. Driving alternate currents through the two electrodes results in polarization switching of CPL with frequencies up to 100 kHz. Furthermore, tuning the current density ratio in the two electrodes enables manipulation of the degree of circular polarization. These results demonstrate arbitrary electrical control of pola…
The circular polarization of light scattered by biological tissues provides valuable information and has been considered as a powerful tool for the diagnosis of tumor tissue. We propose a non-staining, non-invasive and in-vivo cancer diagnosis technique using an endoscope equipped with circularly polarized light-emitting diodes (spin-LEDs). We studied the scattering process of the circularly polarized light against cell nuclei in pseudo-healthy and cancerous tissues using the existing Monte Carlo method. The calculation results indicate that the resultant circular polarizations of light scatte…
Intense attosecond magnetic field pulses are predicted to be produced by intense few cycle circularly polarized UV pulses. Numerical solutions of the time dependent Schrödinger equation for H$_2^+$ are used to study the dynamical process. Spiralling attosecond circular electron wave packets are created with nanometer molecular dimensions, thus generating magnetic fields of several tens of Teslas ($10^5$ Gauss). Simulations show that the induced magnetic field is critically dependent on the pulse wavelength $λ$ and pulse duration $nτ$ ($n$ number of cycle) as predicted by a classical model. For…
We have investigated the polarization of attosecond light bursts generated by nanobunches of electrons from relativistic few-cycle laser pulse interaction with the surface of overdense plasmas. Particle-in-cell simulation shows that the polarization state of the generated attosecond burst depends on the incident-pulse polarization, duration, carrier envelope phase, as well as the plasma scale length. Through laser and plasma parameter control, without compromise of generation efficiency, a linearly polarized laser pulse with azimuth $θ^i=10^\circ$ can generate an elliptically polarized attosec…
Directional emission of photons with designed polarizations and orbital angular momenta is crucial for exploiting full potential of quantum emitters (QEs) within quantum information technologies. Capitalizing on the concept of hybrid plasmon-QE coupled metasurfaces, we develop a holography-based design approach allowing one to construct surface nanostructures for outcoupling QE-excited circularly diverging surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) into well-collimated beams of photons with desirable polarization characteristics propagating along given directions. Using the well-established simulation …
Chiral structures have reported radiation of circular polarized electromagnetic waves (CPs) in a specific direction. Here we report a class of torus knot radiators that is not only chiral but also three-dimensional (3-D) rotational symmetric along X, Y and Z axes. Because of this exotic chirality and symmetry, the knot radiator presented is able to demonstrate omnidirectional circular polarized radiation, which has never been reported in any known structures.
Propagation features of circularly polarized (CP) electromagnetic waves in magnetized plasmas are determined by the plasma density and the magnetic field strength. This property can be applied to design a unique plasma photonic device for intense short-pulse lasers. We have demonstrated by numerical simulations that a thin plasma foil under an external magnetic field works as a polarizing plate to separate a linearly polarized laser into two CP waves traveling in the opposite direction. This plasma photonic device has an advantage for generating intense CP waves even with a relativistic amplit…
We show that circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses produce field-free alignment in linear and planar molecules. We study the rotational wavepacket evolution of O$_2$ and benzene created by circularly polarized light. For benzene, we align the molecular plane to the plane of polarization. For O$_2$, we demonstrate that circular polarization yields a net alignment along the laser propagation axis at certain phases of the evolution. Circular polarization gives us the ability to control alignment of linear molecules outside the plane of polarization, providing new capabilities for molecula…
Time-resolved imaging reveals that the helicity dependent all-optical switching (HD-AOS) of Co/Pt ferromagnetic multilayers proceeds by two stages. First one involves the helicity independent and stochastic nucleation of reversed magnetic domains. At the second stage circularly polarized light breaks the degeneracy between the magnetic domains and promotes the preferred direction of domain wall (DW) motion. The growth of the reversed domain from the nucleation cite, for a particular helicity, leads to full magnetic reversal. This study demonstrates a novel mechanism of HD-AOS mediated by the d…
Controlling a nonlinear process like supercontinuum generation (SG) with the polarization-state of laser is an important demonstration of laser selectivity. We show that the threshold for SG and the total amount of supercontinuum generated depends on incident laser polarization for isotropic samples. Irrespective of the nature of the samples chosen, SG efficiency decreases as the incident laser polarization changes from linear to circular and thus, provides the first experimental demonstration of the suppression of SG with circularly polarized light. The ratio of the overall SG between the lin…
This work demonstrates nanoscale magnetic imaging using bright circularly polarized high-harmonic radiation. We utilize the magneto-optical contrast of worm-like magnetic domains in a Co/Pd multilayer structure, obtaining quantitative amplitude and phase maps by lensless imaging. A diffraction-limited spatial resolution of 49 nm is achieved with iterative phase reconstruction enhanced by a holographic mask. Harnessing the unique coherence of high harmonics, this approach will facilitate quantitative, element-specific and spatially-resolved studies of ultrafast magnetization dynamics, advancing…
A scheme for generating intense high-harmonic optical vortices is proposed. It relies on spin-orbit interaction of light when a relativistically-strong circularly polarized laser pulse irradiates a micro-plasma-waveguide. The intense laser field drives a strong surface wave at the inner boundary of the waveguide, which leads to high-order harmonic generation as the laser traveling inside. For a circularly polarized drive laser, the optical chirality is imprinted to the surface wave, which facilitates conversion of spin angular momentum of the fundamental light into orbital angular momenta of t…
