In-plane hyperbolic polariton tuners in terahertz and long-wave infrared regimes

TL;DR

This paper introduces an in-plane hyperbolic polariton tuner using patterned van der Waals semiconductors, enabling efficient far-field excitation and control of terahertz and long-wave infrared resonances with high quality factors.

Contribution

It presents a novel in-plane hyperbolic polariton tuner based on patterned {5}-MoO3, allowing direct far-field excitation and electromagnetic wave regulation in THz and LWIR regimes.

Findings

Achieved LWIR and THz resonances with quality factors up to 300.

Demonstrated intensity, wavelength, and polarization control of electromagnetic waves.

Enabled development of miniaturized THz and LWIR devices.

Abstract

Development of terahertz (THz) and long-wave infrared (LWIR) technologies is mainly bottlenecked by the limited intrinsic response of traditional materials. Hyperbolic phonon polaritons (HPhPs) of van der Waals semiconductors couple strongly with THz and LWIR radiation. However, the mismatch of photon-polariton momentum makes far-field excitation of HPhPs challenging. Here, we propose an In-Plane Hyperbolic Polariton Tuner that is based on patterning van der Waals semiconductors, here {\alpha}-MoO3, into ribbon arrays. We demonstrate that such tuners respond directly to far-field excitation and give rise to LWIR and THz resonances with high quality factors up to 300, which are strongly dependent on in-plane hyperbolic polariton of the patterned {\alpha}-MoO3. We further show that with this tuner, intensity regulation of reflected and transmitted electromagnetic waves, as well as their wavelength and polarization selection can be achieved. This is important to development of THz and LWIR miniaturized devices.