Optical chirality of membrane metasurfaces with broken in-plane symmetry
Abstract
We study chiroptical properties of single-layer dielectric membrane metasurfaces with broken in-plane symmetry. Although chiral optics was long tied to structures lacking any mirror symmetry, planar (2D) chiral structures that retain a horizontal mirror plane now attract growing attention for their strong chiral optical effects. We explicitly show and explain how single-layer metasurfaces can achieve strong resonant chiral response. Although the single-layer geometry forbids conventional co-polarized circular dichroism, strong resonant conversion circular dichroism appears to be possible in particular wavelength ranges determined by the spectra of photonic eigenmodes. We explore its origin starting with a C4 rotation-symmetric and in-plane mirror-symmetric membrane metasurface and applying to it various in-plane perturbations. Simultaneous breaking of the in-plane mirror symmetry and lifting the rotation symmetry unlocks resonantly enhanced circular conversion dichroism. We derive selection rules for this effect and trace its origin to eigenmode interference and intercoupling using chiral coupled-mode theory. Material absorption weakens the conversion dichroism produced by modes of opposite up-down parity, but it is essential for that produced by modes of the same parity.
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BibTeX
@misc{toftul2026optical,
title = {{Optical chirality of membrane metasurfaces with broken in-plane symmetry}},
author = {Ivan Toftul and Brijesh Kumar and Yuri Kivshar},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2606.05775},
eprint = {2606.05775},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.05775},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Optical chirality of membrane metasurfaces with broken in-plane symmetry
AU - Ivan Toftul
AU - Brijesh Kumar
AU - Yuri Kivshar
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/15
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2606.05775
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.05775
AB - We study chiroptical properties of single-layer dielectric membrane metasurfaces with broken in-plane symmetry. Although chiral optics was long tied to structures lacking any mirror symmetry, planar (2D) chiral structures that retain a horizontal mirror plane now attract growing attention for their strong chiral optical effects. We explicitly show and explain how single-layer metasurfaces can achieve strong resonant chiral response. Although the single-layer geometry forbids conventional co-polarized circular dichroism, strong resonant conversion circular dichroism appears to be possible in particular wavelength ranges determined by the spectra of photonic eigenmodes. We explore its origin starting with a C_4 rotation-symmetric and in-plane mirror-symmetric membrane metasurface and applying to it various in-plane perturbations. Simultaneous breaking of the in-plane mirror symmetry and lifting the rotation symmetry unlocks resonantly enhanced circular conversion dichroism. We derive selection rules for this effect and trace its origin to eigenmode interference and intercoupling using chiral coupled-mode theory. Material absorption weakens the conversion dichroism produced by modes of opposite up-down parity, but it is essential for that produced by modes of the same parity.
ER -