Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are the first truly two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor, providing an excellent platform to investigate light-matter interaction in the 2D limit. Apart from fundamental scientific exploration, this material system has attracted active research interest in the nanophotonic devices community for its unique optoelectronic properties. The inherently strong excitonic response in monolayer TMDs can be further enhanced by exploiting the temporal confinement of light in nanophotonic structures. Dielectric metasurfaces are one such two-dimensional nanophotonic structures, which have recently demonstrated strong potential to not only miniaturize existing optical components, but also to create completely new class of designer optics. Going beyond passive optical elements, researchers are now exploring active metasurfaces using emerging materials and the utility of metasurfaces to enhance the light-matter interaction. Here, we demonstrate a 2D exciton-polariton system by strongly coupling atomically thin tungsten diselenide (WSe2) monolayer to a silicon nitride (SiN) metasurface. Via energy-momentum spectroscopy of the WSe2-metasurface system, we observed the characteristic anti-crossing of the polariton dispersion both in the reflection and photoluminescence spectrum. A Rabi splitting of 18 meV was observed which matched well with our numerical simulation. The diffraction effects of the nano-patterned metasurface also resulted in a highly directional polariton emission. Finally, we showed that the Rabi splitting, the polariton dispersion and the far-field emission pattern could be tailored with subwavelength-scale engineering of the optical meta-atoms. Our platform thus opens the door for the future development of novel, exotic exciton-polariton devices by advanced meta-optical engineering.
Hyperbolic metasurfaces based on van der Waals (vdW) materials support propagation of extremely anisotropic polaritons towards nanoscale light compression and manipulation, and thus has great potential in the applications of planar hyperlens, nanolasing, quantum optics and ultrasensitive infrared spectroscopy. Two-dimensional hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) as a vdW metasurface can manipulate the propagation of hyperbolic polaritons at the level of single atomic layers, possessing higher degree of field confinement and lower losses than the conventional media. However, active manipulation of hy…
Metasurfaces with strongly anisotropic optical properties can support deep subwavelength-scale confined electromagnetic waves (polaritons) that promise opportunities for controlling light in photonic and optoelectronic applications. We develop a mid-infrared hyperbolic metasurface by nanostructuring a thin layer of hexagonal boron nitride supporting deep subwavelength-scale phonon polaritons that propagate with in-plane hyperbolic dispersion. By applying an infrared nanoimaging technique, we visualize the concave (anomalous) wavefronts of a diverging polariton beam, which represent a landmark …
The advance in designing arrays of ultrathin two-dimensional optical nano-resonators, known as metasurfaces, is currently enabling a large variety of novel flat optical components. The remarkable control over the electromagnetic fields offered by this technology can be further extended to the active regime in order to manipulate the light characteristics in real-time. In this contribution, we couple the excitonic resonance of atomic thin MoS2 monolayers with gap-surface-plasmon (GSP) metasurfaces, and demonstrate selective enhancement of the exciton-plasmon polariton emissions. We further demo…
Dynamic radiative cooling attracts fast-increasing interest due to its adaptability to changing environment and promises for more energy-savings than the static counterpart. Here we demonstrate enhanced infrared emission by thermally switching the excitation of magnetic polariton with microstructured vanadium dioxide (VO2) metasurfaces fabricated via scalable and etch-free processes. Temperature-dependent infrared spectroscopy clearly shows that the spectral emittance of fabricated tunable metasurfaces at wavelengths from 2 to 6 um is significantly enhanced when heated beyond its phase transit…
Polaritonic self-hybridized critical coupling by Brillouin zone folding induced quasi-bound states in the continuum in bulk WS2 metasurfaces
Key Laboratory for Physical Electronics and Devices of the Ministry of Education and Shaanxi Key Lab of Information Photonic Technique, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University（教育部电子科学与技术重点实验室和陕西信息光子技术重点实验室，西安交通大学电子科学与工程学院）
Exciton-polaritons, elementary excitations arising from the strong coupling regime between photons and excitons in insulators or semiconductors, represent a promising platform for studying quantum fluids of light and realizing prospective all-optical devices. Among different materials for room temperature polaritonic devices, two-dimensional (2D) layered perovskites have recently emerged as one of the promising candidates thanks to their prominent excitonic features at room temperature. Here we report on the experimental demonstration of exciton-polaritons at room temperature in resonant metas…
Metasurfaces, with intrinsically planar nature and subwavelength thickness, provide us unconventional methodologies to not only mold the flow of propagating waves but also manipulate near-field waves. Plasmonic metasurfaces with topological transition for controlling surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) recently have been experimentally demonstrated, which, however, are limited to optical frequencies. In this work, we proposed and experimentally characterized an ultrathin metasurface with the topological transition for manipulating spoof SPPs at low frequency. We demonstrated rich interesting phe…
Achieving electrical injection of exciton-polaritons, half-light, half-matter quasiparticles arising from the strong coupling between photonic and excitonic resonances, is a crucial milestone to scale up polaritonic devices such as optical computers, quantum simulators and inversionless lasers. Here we present a new approach to achieve strong coupling between electrically injected excitons and photonic bound states in the continuum of a dielectric metasurface monolithically patterned in the channel of a light-emitting transistor. Exciton-polaritons are generated by coupling electrically inject…
The in-plane negative refraction of high-momentum (i.e., high-k) photonic modes could enable many applications such as imaging and hyperlensing in a planar platform at deep-subwavelength scales. However, its practical implementation in experiments remains elusive so far. Here we propose a class of hyperbolic metasurfaces, which is characterized by an anisotropic magnetic sheet conductivity and can support the in-plane ultrahigh-k magnetic designer polaritons. Based on such metasurfaces, we report the first experimental observation of the all-angle negative refraction of designer polaritons at …
Hyperbolic polaritons in van der Waals materials and metamaterial heterostructures provide unprecedented control over light-matter interaction at the extreme nanoscale. Here, we propose a concept of type-I hyperbolic metasurface supporting highly-squeezed magnetic designer polaritons, which act as magnetic analogues to hyperbolic polaritons in the hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) in the first Reststrahlen band. Comparing with the natural h-BN, the size and spacing of the metasurface unit cell can be readily scaled up (or down), allowing for manipulating designer polaritons in frequency and in sp…
Polaritons, coupled excitations of photons and dipolar matter excitations, can propagate along anisotropic metasurfaces with either hyperbolic or elliptical dispersion. At the transition from hyperbolic to elliptical dispersion (corresponding to a topological transition), various intriguing phenomena are found, such as an enhancement of the photonic density of states, polariton canalization and hyperlensing. Here we investigate theoretically and experimentally the topological transition and the polaritonic coupling of deeply subwavelength elements in a uniaxial infrared-phononic metasurface, a…
Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) have been widely exploited in various scientific communities, ranging from physics, chemistry to biology, due to the strong confinement of light to the metal surface. For many applications it is important that the free space photon can be coupled to SPPs in a controllable manner. In this Letter, we apply the concept of interfacial phase discontinuity for circularly polarizations on a metasurface to the design of a novel type of polarization dependent SPP unidirectional excitation at normal incidence. Selective unidirectional excitation of SPPs along opposite d…
Pseudorelativistic Dirac quasiparticles have emerged in a plethora of artificial graphene systems that mimic the underlying honeycomb symmetry of graphene. However, it is notoriously difficult to manipulate their properties without modifying the lattice structure. Here we theoretically investigate polaritons supported by honeycomb metasurfaces and, despite the trivial nature of the resonant elements, we unveil rich Dirac physics stemming from a non-trivial winding in the light-matter interaction. The metasurfaces simultaneously exhibit two distinct species of massless Dirac polaritons, namely …
Exciton-polaritons are mixed light-matter excitations that result from the strong coupling regime between an active excitonic material and photonic resonances. Harnessing these hybrid excitations provides a rich playground to explore fascinating fundamental features, such as out-of-equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensation and quantum fluids of light, as well as novel mechanisms to be exploited in optoelectronic devices. Here, we investigate experimentally the formation of exciton-polaritons arising from the mixing between hybrid inorganic-organic perovskite excitons and an optical Bound state In…
The miniaturization of infrared gas sensors is largely hindered by expensive and bulky laser sources as well as the use of optical filters. In this work, we propose a dual-band, directional thermal emitter based on compact W-Si-Cu metasurfaces to address this issue. This metasurface emitter is designed to support two nondispersive magnetic polariton modes that exhibit distinct directional thermal emission profiles, thus enabling dual-band detection without the need of optical filters. Specifically, we evaluate the feasibility of such dual-band filterless detection by adapting the metasurface e…
The hybrid modes incorporating surface phonon polariton (SPhP) modes in boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) and surface plasmon polariton (SPP) modes in graphene monolayers are theoretically studied. The combination of the 1D BNNTs and 2D graphene monolayer further improves the modal characteristics with electrical tunability. Superior to the graphene monolayers, the proposed heterostructures supports single mode transmission with lateral optical confinement. The modal characteristics can be shifted from SPP-like toward SPhP-like. Both the figure of merit and field enhancement of hybrid modes are …
A monolayer of transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) is shown to be capable of supporting a guided optical mode below the exciton resonance, a two-dimensional exciton polariton. This visible or near IR mode is confined roughly within a micrometer from the monolayer and has propagation length exceeding 100 micrometers. The light guiding ability makes TMDC monolayers more versatile and potentially attractive photonic platform.
Chiral Nonlinear Polaritonics with van der Waals Metasurfaces
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München（慕尼黑大学）；Universidade Federal de Pernambuco（伯南布哥联邦大学）；Monash University（莫纳什大学）；Imperial College London（帝国理工学院）；Shubnikov Institute of Crystallography, National Research Centre "Kurchatov Institute"（库尔恰托夫国家研究中心舒比尼科夫晶体学研究所）；National University of Science and Technology ‘MISIS’（国立科技大学 MISIS）；Australian National University（澳大利亚国立大学）
The nonlinear processes of frequency conversion like second harmonic generation (SHG) usually obey certain selection rules, resulting from the preservation of different kind of physical quantities, e.g., the angular momentum. For SHG created by monolayer of transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) like WS2, the valley-exciton locked selection rule predicts an SHG signal in the cross-polarization state. By combining plasmonic nanostructures with a monolayer of TMDC, a hybrid metasurface is realized which affects this nonlinear process due to an additional polarization conversion process. Here, …
2D materials support unique excitations of quasi-particles that consist of a material excitation and photons called polaritons. Especially interesting are in-plane propagating polaritons which can be confined to a single monolayer and carry large momentum. In this work, we report the existence of a new type of in-plane propagating polariton, supported on monolayer transition-metal-dicalcogonide (TMD) in the visible spectrum, which has not yet been observed. This 2D in-plane exciton-polariton (2DEP) is described by the coupling of an electromagnetic light field with the collective oscillations …
Excitons in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are formed at K and K' points at the boundary of the Brillouin zone. They acquire a valley degree of freedom, which may be used as a complementary platform for information transport and processing. In a different context, metasurfaces consisting of engineered arrays of polarizable inclusions have enabled the manipulation of light in unprecedented ways, and found applications in imaging, optical information processing, and cloaking. Here, we demonstrate that, by coupling a MoS2 monolayer to a suitably designed metasurface consisting …
Single layers of transition metal dichalcogenides are two-dimensional direct bandgap semiconductors with degenerate, but inequivalent, `valleys' in the electronic structure that can be selectively excited by polarized light. Coherent superpositions of light and matter, exciton-polaritons, have been observed when these materials are strongly coupled to photons, but these hybrid quasiparticles do not harness the valley-sensitive excitations of monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides. Here, we demonstrate evidence for valley polarized exciton-polaritons in monolayers of MoS$_2$ embedded in a d…
Artificial magnetic fields are revolutionizing our ability to manipulate neutral particles, by enabling the emulation of exotic phenomena once thought to be exclusive to charged particles. In particular, pseudo-magnetic fields generated by nonuniform strain in artificial lattices have attracted considerable interest because of their simple geometrical origin. However, to date, these strain-induced pseudo-magnetic fields have failed to emulate the tunability of real magnetic fields because they are dictated solely by the strain configuration. Here, we overcome this apparent limitation for polar…
Strong enhancement of molecular circular dichroism has the potential to enable efficient asymmetric photolysis, a method of chiral separation that has conventionally been impeded by insufficient yield and low enantiomeric excess. Here, we study experimentally how predicted enhancements in optical chirality density near resonant silicon nanodisks boost circular dichroism. We use fluorescence-detected circular dichroism spectroscopy to measure indirectly the differential absorption of circularly polarized light by a monolayer of optically active molecules functionalized to silicon nanodisk array…
The rise of quantum science and technologies motivates photonics research to seek new platforms with strong light-matter interactions to facilitate quantum behaviors at moderate light intensities. One promising platform to reach such strong light-matter interacting regimes is offered by polaritonic metasurfaces, which represent ultrathin artificial media structured on nano-scale and designed to support polaritons - half-light half-matter quasiparticles. Topological polaritons, or 'topolaritons', offer an ideal platform in this context, with unique properties stemming from topological phases of…
Solid state cavity quantum electrodynamics is a rapidly advancing field which explores the frontiers of light-matter coupling. Plasmonic approaches are of particular interest in this field, since they carry the potential to squeeze optical modes to spaces significantly below the diffraction limit1,2, enhancing light-matter coupling. They further serve as an architecture to design ultra-fast, non-linear integrated circuits with smallest footprints3. Transition metal dichalcogenides are ideally suited as the active material in such circuits as they interact strongly with light at the ultimate mo…
Atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides possess valley dependent functionalities that are usually available only at crogenic temperatures, constrained by various valley depolarization scatterings. The formation of exciton polaritons by coherently superimposing excitons and microcavity photons potentially harnesses the valley polarized polariton polariton interactions for novel valleytronics devices. Robust EPs have been demonstrated at room temperature in TMDs microcavity, however, the coherent polariton lasing and condensation remain elusive. Herein, we demonstrate for the first time…
Effective refractive index of disordered all-dielectric metasurfaces consisting of gallium phosphide (GaP) spheres is studied by means of three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations at the wavelength of 532~nm. It is shown that a mixture of the high index nanoparticles with sizes close to the first magnetic and electric resonances randomly dispersed on metasurface may possess negative refraction. The dependence of the metasurface effective refractive index on the nanoparticle concentration and size is constructed. The feasibility of negative refraction at large concentra…
Systems with strong light-matter interaction opens up new avenues for studying topological phases of matter. Examples include exciton-polaritons, mixed light-matter quasiparticles, where the topology of the polaritonic band structure arises from the collective coupling between matter wave and optical fields strongly confined in periodic dielectric structures. Distinct from light-matter interaction in a uniform environment, the spatially varying nature of the optical fields leads to a fundamental modification of the well-known optical selection rules, which were derived under the plane wave app…
