Nonlinear chiral light generation from resonant metasurfaces

Fangxing Lai, Jun Yin, Ivan Toftul, Hamdi Barkaoui, Huachun Deng, Xinbo Sha, Maxim V. Gorkunov, Yuri Kivshar () and Qinghai Song ()
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Fangxing Lai: Harbin Institute of Technology, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Key Lab of Micro-Nano Optoelectronic Information System, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Optoelectronic Materials and Intelligent Photonic Systems
Jun Yin: Harbin Institute of Technology, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Key Lab of Micro-Nano Optoelectronic Information System, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Optoelectronic Materials and Intelligent Photonic Systems
Ivan Toftul: Australian National University, Nonlinear Physics Center, Research School of Physics
Hamdi Barkaoui: Harbin Institute of Technology, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Key Lab of Micro-Nano Optoelectronic Information System, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Optoelectronic Materials and Intelligent Photonic Systems
Huachun Deng: Harbin Institute of Technology, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Key Lab of Micro-Nano Optoelectronic Information System, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Optoelectronic Materials and Intelligent Photonic Systems
Xinbo Sha: Harbin Institute of Technology, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Key Lab of Micro-Nano Optoelectronic Information System, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Optoelectronic Materials and Intelligent Photonic Systems
Maxim V. Gorkunov: NRC “Kurchatov Institute”, Shubnikov Institute of Crystallography
Yuri Kivshar: Australian National University, Nonlinear Physics Center, Research School of Physics
Qinghai Song: Harbin Institute of Technology, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Key Lab of Micro-Nano Optoelectronic Information System, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Optoelectronic Materials and Intelligent Photonic Systems

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Chiral nonlinear response has been explored for decades due to its extreme sensitivity to molecular and structural dissymmetry. Conventional approaches often require bulky systems and produce only static nonlinear chirality. Here, we report on a generic mechanism for the generation and control of nonlinear chiral light in resonant optical systems. We reveal that nonlinear resonant generation of circularly polarized light from achiral dielectric metasurfaces is extremely sensitive to the polarization state of the fundamental wave, and a resonant metasurface can produce light with arbitrary degree of nonlinear chirality (DNC). Experimentally, we demonstrate that the chirality of nonlinear radiation from one metasurface can be continuously tuned from DNC = −0.86 to DNC = 0.94 by simply varying the polarization angle of the incident wave. By further exploiting the instantaneous polarization state, nonlinear chirality has been switched in a delay time step of 3.2 fs, which is orders of magnitude more sensitive than the current state-of-the-art polarization modulation. These results promise to enrich our understanding of nonlinear processes in chiral structures and their manipulation with resonant photonic structures.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-65721-z

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