Magneto-optical chirality in a coherently coupled exciton-plasmon system

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that coherent coupling between excitons in monolayer WSe2 and plasmonic nanodisks induces magneto-optical circular dichroism, paving the way for chiral metasurfaces in advanced optical applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel exciton-plasmon coupling mechanism that enables magneto-optical chirality in a spectrally narrow window, modeled with a master equation framework.

Findings

Observation of magneto-induced circular dichroism in coupled exciton-plasmon system

Spectrally narrow Fano interference window identified

Modeling of the system using a master equation approach

Abstract

Chirality is a fundamental asymmetry phenomenon, with chiral optical elements exhibiting asymmetric response in reflection or absorption of circularly polarized light. Recent realizations of such elements include nanoplasmonic systems with broken mirror symmetry and polarization-contrasting optical absorption known as circular dichroism. An alternative route to circular dichroism is provided by spin-valley polarized excitons in atomically thin semiconductors. In the presence of magnetic fields, they exhibit an imbalanced coupling to circularly polarized photons and thus circular dichroism. Here, we demonstrate that polarization-contrasting optical transitions associated with excitons in monolayer WSe$_2$ can be transferred to proximal plasmonic nanodisks by coherent coupling. The coupled exciton-plasmon system exhibits magneto-induced circular dichroism in a spectrally narrow window of Fano interference, which we model in a master equation framework. Our work motivates exciton-plasmon interfaces as building blocks of chiral metasurfaces for applications in information processing, non-linear optics and sensing.