On-demand steering of hyperbolic chiral polaritons

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the on-demand control of hyperbolic chiral polaritons in natural materials, enabling polarization-selective light steering in nanophotonic applications using a novel microscopy technique.

Contribution

It reports the first experimental observation of the hyperbolic spin Hall effect in natural hyperbolic materials, with a new microscopy method for launching and imaging hyperbolic plasmon polaritons.

Findings

Hyperbolic spin Hall effect observed in MoOCl2 in visible and near-infrared range.

Propagation direction of hyperbolic and surface plasmons switches with light helicity.

A novel far-field pump-probe microscope enables sensitive control and imaging of hyperbolic polaritons.

Abstract

Control of light polarization and propagation in sub-wavelength architectures is foundational to nanophotonic technologies. A frontier direction is to leverage strong optical spin-orbit interactions to realize polarization-selective light steering, known as the photonic spin Hall effect. In this context, hyperbolic plasmon polaritons (HPPs) are of particular interest as they offer large optical spin-orbit coupling from strong confinement and dielectric anisotropy, as well as ray-like propagation. Despite theoretical predictions, however, the hyperbolic spin Hall effect in natural materials has remained elusive. Here, we demonstrate the hyperbolic spin Hall effect in the visible and near-infrared range in the natural hyperbolic van der Waals metal MoOCl2. Enabling this discovery is a novel far-field pump-probe microscope that facilitates the launching and imaging of HPPs with exceptional sensitivity through interference with a high-momentum reference field. This approach preserves excellent control over light polarization, overcoming a key barrier to polarization-selective interrogation of hyperbolic materials. We show that both hyperbolic and surface plasmons in MoOCl2 display chiral fields, and that their propagation direction can be completely switched upon light helicity reversal. Our results demonstrate on-demand steering of chiral plasmons, firmly establishing natural hyperbolic materials as ideal components for reconfigurable nanophotonics and chiral light-matter coupling.