Chiral Surface Waves for Enhanced Circular Dichroism

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new chiral sensing platform utilizing a photonic crystal with a birefringent defect to generate superchiral fields, significantly enhancing circular dichroism signals for improved spectroscopic detection.

Contribution

It presents a novel design that produces large-area superchiral fields with both handednesses, enabling substantial enhancement of circular dichroism signals.

Findings

Enhancement of circular dichroism signal by two orders of magnitude.

Homogeneous superchiral fields over large areas.

Broad spectral range for chiral sensing.

Abstract

We present a novel chiral sensing platform that combines a one-dimensional photonic crystal design with a birefringent surface defect. The platform sustains simultaneous transverse electric and transverse magnetic surface modes, which are exploited to generate chiral surface waves. The present design provides homogeneous and superchiral fields of both handednesses over arbitrarily large areas in a wide spectral range, resulting in the enhancement of the circular dichroism signal by two orders of magnitude, thus paving the road toward the successful combination of surface-enhanced spectroscopies and electromagnetic superchirality.