Chiral nonlinear polaritonics with van der Waals metasurfaces.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41894509.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/sciadv.aeb5631 and PMC identifier 13025102.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Chiral optical cavities are crucial for the development of nonequilibrium quantum materials by discriminating and selectively coupling to light of a specific circular polarization, but fundamentally cannot be realized with conventional mirror cavities. Here, we demonstrate this unique functionality by developing a monolithic transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) metasurface with broken out-of-plane symmetry, allowing for the selective formation of self-hybridized chiral exciton-polaritons. Our metasurface maintains maximal chirality for oblique incidence up to 20°, thereby outperforming all previously known designs. Moreover, we study the chiral strong-coupling regime in nonlinear experiments and reveal polaritonic signatures in chiral third-harmonic generation. Our results position maximally chiral van der Waals (vdW) metasurfaces as a versatile platform for tunable chiral polaritonics with applications in nonreciprocal photonic devices and valleytronics.