Toward Maximally Electromagnetically Chiral Scatterers at Optical Frequencies

Abstract

Designing objects with predefined optical properties is a task of fundamental importance for nanophotonics, and chirality is a prototypical example of such a property, with applications ranging from photochemistry to nonlinear photonics. A measure of electromagnetic chirality with a well-defined upper bound has recently been proposed. Here, we optimize the shape of silver helices at discrete frequencies ranging from the far-infrared to the optical band. Gaussian process optimization, taking into account also shape derivative information on the helices scattering response, is used to maximize the electromagnetic chirality. We show that the theoretical designs achieve more than 90% of the upper bound of em-chirality for wavelenghts 3 μm or larger, while their performance decreases toward the optical band. We fabricate and characterize helices for operation at 800 nm and identify some of the imperfections that affect the performance. Our work motivates further research both on the theoretical and fabrication sides to unlock potential applications of objects with large electromagnetic chirality at optical frequencies, such as helicity filtering glasses. We show that, at 3 μm, a thin slab of randomly oriented helices can absorb 99% of the light of one helicity while absorbing only 10% of the opposite helicity.