The emergence of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenide materials has sparked intense activity in valleytronics, as their valley information can be encoded and detected with the spin angular momentum of light. We demonstrate the valley-dependent directional coupling of light using a plasmonic nanowire-tungsten disulfide (WS) layers system. We show that the valley pseudospin in WS couples to transverse optical spin of the same handedness with a directional coupling efficiency of 90 ± 1%. Our results provide a platform for controlling, detecting, and processing valley and spin information with precise optical control at the nanoscale.
Topological protection in photonics offers new prospects for guiding and manipulating classical and quantum information. The mechanism of spin-orbit coupling promises the emergence of edge states that are helical; exhibiting unidirectional propagation that is topologically protected against backscattering. We directly observe the topological states of a photonic analogue of electronic materials exhibiting the quantum Spin Hall effect, living at the interface between two silicon photonic crystals with different topological order. Through the far-field radiation that is inherent to the states' existence we characterize their properties, including linear dispersion and low loss. Importantly, we find that the edge state pseudospin is encoded in unique circular far-field polarization and linked to unidirectional propagation, thus revealing a signature of the underlying photonic spin-orbit coupling. We use this connection to selectively excite different edge states with polarized light, and directly visualize their routing along sharp chiral waveguide junctions.
It is well known that the quasinormal modes (or resonant states) of photonic structures can be associated with the poles of the scattering matrix of the system in the complex-frequency plane. In this work, the inverse problem, i.e., the reconstruction of the scattering matrix from the knowledge of the quasinormal modes, is addressed. We develop a general and scalable quasinormal-mode expansion of the scattering matrix, requiring only the complex eigenfrequencies and the far-field properties of the eigenmodes. The theory is validated by applying it to illustrative nanophotonic systems with multiple overlapping electromagnetic modes. The examples demonstrate that our theory provides an accurate first-principle prediction of the scattering properties, without the need for postulating ad-hoc nonresonant channels.Scattering matrices have been playing a ubiquitous role in physics since the early history of quantum field theory [1]. Nowadays, scattering-matrix techniques represent an irreplaceable tool for scientists working in nuclear physics [2], electronic transport [3], or classically chaotic systems [4], just to mention some of the several fields of application. Scattering matrices also enjoy a well deserved popularity in electromagnetic modeling, ranging from microwave devices [5] to nanophotonics applications, such as scattering and transmission from nanostructured objects [6][7][8].Most of the systems that are usually investigated with scattering-matrix techniques display a highly structured resonant response as a function of the excitation frequency (or energy), with the resonances in the spectrum being directly related to the poles of the analytical continuation of the scattering matrix in the complexfrequency plane [9,10]. For electromagnetic systems, such poles correspond to quasinormal modes (also called resonant states), i.e., complex-frequency solutions of Maxwell's equations with outgoing-wave boundary conditions [11][12][13][14][15]. In a sense, quasinormal modes represent the bare skeleton around which the frequency-dependent response of the system is built. The interplay among different electromagnetic modes has proven to be crucial for explaining several intriguing phenomena, such as Fano resonances in optical systems [16], scattering dark states [17,18], and the optical analog of electromagnetically induced transparency and superscattering [19], and for designing new optical materials, such as optical metasurfaces for wavefront shaping [20]. For these reasons, it is desirable and extremely interesting to be able to reconstruct ab initio the entire scattering matrix of a system from the knowledge of its quasinormal modes. Not only would such quasinormal-mode expansion contribute to the understanding of complicated spectral features in terms of interference and superposition of resonant states, but it would also offer practical advantages from the numerical point of view, since a full eigenmode calculation is generally faster and more comprehensive than a large number of single-frequency simulations.A...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.