Planar chirality and optical spin-orbit coupling for chiral Fabry-Perot cavities

TL;DR

This paper presents a simple design for chiral Fabry-Perot cavities using planar chiral polystyrene layers between metallic mirrors, demonstrating spin-orbit coupling and enantiomorphic optical signatures with potential applications in chiral quantum electrodynamics and chemistry.

Contribution

The study introduces a straightforward method to create chiral Fabry-Perot cavities with embedded planar chirality, revealing spin-orbit coupling effects and enantiomorphic optical responses.

Findings

Demonstrated helicity-preserving chiral cavity modes

Observed enantiomorphic signatures under oblique illumination

Achieved excellent agreement between experimental and simulated results

Abstract

We design, in a most simple way, Fabry-Perot cavities with longitudinal chiral modes by sandwiching between two smooth metallic silver mirrors a layer of polystyrene made planar chiral by torsional shear stress. We demonstrate that the helicity-preserving features of our cavities stem from a spin-orbit coupling mechanism seeded inside the cavities by the specific chiroptical features of planar chirality. Planar chirality gives rise to an extrinsic source of three-dimensional chirality under oblique illumination that endows the cavities with enantiomorphic signatures measured experimentally and simulated with excellent agreement. The simplicity of our scheme is particularly promising in the context of chiral cavity QED and polaritonic asymmetric chemistry.