Chiral propagation of plasmons due to competing anisotropies in a twisted photonic heterostructure

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of controllable chiral plasmon polaritons in twisted anisotropic 2D materials, offering a promising platform for tunable nanophotonic devices with enhanced efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to generate and control chiral plasmon polaritons using twisted anisotropic 2D materials, surpassing previous phonon-based approaches.

Findings

Chiral plasmon polaritons can be efficiently generated in twisted anisotropic 2D heterostructures.

Gate voltage and twist angle enable precise control of plasmon chirality.

The approach offers improved tunability and efficiency over existing chiral phonon polaritons.

Abstract

We demonstrate chiral propagation of plasmon polaritons and show it is more efficient and easier to control than the recently observed chiral shear phonon polaritons. We consider plasmon polaritons created in an anisotropic two-dimensional (2D) material, twisted with respect to an anisotropic substrate, to best exploit the competition between anisotropic electron-electron interactions and the anisotropic electronic structure of the host material. Gate voltage and twist angle are then used for precise control of the chiral plasmon polaritons, overcoming the existing restrictions with chiral phonon polaritons. These findings open up feasible opportunities for efficient and tunable plasmon-based nanophotonics and compact high-performance on-chip optical devices.