Scattering asymmetry and circular dichroism in coupled PT-symmetric chiral nanoparticles

Abstract

We investigate the scattering properties of coupled parity-time (PT) symmetric chiral nanospheres with scattering matrix formalism. The exceptional points, i.e., spectral singularities at which the eigenvalues and eigenvectors simultaneously coalesce in the parameter space, of scattering matrix can be tailored by the chirality of the nanospheres. We also calculate the scattering, absorption and extinction cross sections of the PT-symmetric chiral scatter under illumination by monochromatic left- and right-circularly polarized plane waves. We find that the scattering cross section of the nanostructures exhibits an asymmetry when the plane waves are incident from the loss and gain regions, respectively, especially in the broken phase, and the optical cross section exhibits circular dichroism, i.e., differential extinction when the PT-symmetric scatter is endowed with chirality. In particular, under illumination by linearly polarized monochromatic plane waves without intrinsic chirality, the ellipticity of scattered fields in the forward direction, denoting the chirality of light, becomes larger when the scatter is in the PT-symmetry-broken phase. Our findings demonstrate that the gain and loss can control the optical chirality and enhance the chiroptical interactions and pave the way for studying the resonant chiral light–matter interactions in non-Hermitian photonics.

Induced circular dichroism of achiral dielectric elliptical hole arrays with a monolayer borophene film

“…For instance, circular dichroism (CD) refers to the difference in the optical responses when chiral nanostructures are illuminated respectively by left circularly polarized (LCP) light and right circularly polarized (RCP) light. 4,5 The analysis of CD signals is the most popular strategy to recognize chiral molecules. Nevertheless, chiral molecules weakly interact with the incident light, which gives rise to weak CD effects, and the response of chiral molecules is usually in the ultraviolet band.…”

Kerker Effects and Bound States in the Continuum in PT-Symmetric Dielectric Metasurfaces

“…So far a great deal of PT-symmetric optical systems have been theoretically and experimentally explored, such as two coupled optical resonantors [14], coupled optical waveguides [13] and photonic waveguide lattices [15]. Accordingly, a wide range of intriguing counter-intuitive optical properties have been demonstrated, such as unidirectional invisibility [17], exceptional points (EPs) [13,18,19], loss induced optical transparency [20] and single mode laser [21].…”