Unidirectional chiral scattering from single enantiomeric plasmonic nanoparticles

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method for achieving unidirectional chiral scattering using rotating chiral dipoles in plasmonic nanoparticles, enabling highly-directional and enantio-sensitive light manipulation at the nanoscale.

Contribution

The study presents the concept of rotating chiral dipoles and demonstrates their implementation in plasmonic helicoidal nanoparticles for unidirectional chiral light scattering.

Findings

Experimental demonstration of enantio-sensitive forward scattering.

Highly-directional scattering depends on the incident light's handedness.

Potential applications in chiral light-matter interaction and nano-optics.

Abstract

Controlling scattering and routing of chiral light at the nanoscale is important for optical information processing and imaging, quantum technologies as well as optical manipulation. Here, we introduce a concept of rotating chiral dipoles in order to achieve unidirectional chiral scattering. Implementing this concept by engineering multipole excitations in plasmonic helicoidal nanoparticles, we experimentally demonstrate enantio-sensitive and highly-directional forward scattering of circularly polarised light. The intensity of this highly-directional scattering is defined by the mutual relation between the handedness of the incident light and the chirality of the structure. The concept of rotating chiral dipoles opens up numerous possibilities for engineering of scattering from chiral nanostructures and optical nano-antennas for the design and application of chiral light-matter interaction.