Chapter 4
Chirality and Antiferromagnetism
in Optical Metasurfaces
Kun Huang
Abstract In this chapter, we will introduce optical chiral metasurfaces that modulate
the phase and amplitude of the circularly polarized (CP) light by using orientationrotated artificial subwavelength structures. For high-efficiency dielectric chiral metasurfaces, the nanostructures work as nanoscale half-waveplates that hold the physical
origins of antiferromagnetism by inducing multiple anti-parallel magnetic dipoles.
The interaction between metasurfaces and chiral CP light (carrying the spin angular
momentum) enables polarization meta-optics for the applications such as lens,
grating and hologram. In addition, the optical vortex beams carrying the orbital
angular momentum of light is introduced as another chiral light because the helical
wavefronts with opposite handednesses exhibit the mirror symmetry. Such a chiral
feature of optical vortex beam is used to probe the chirality of micro-structures, i.e.,
helical dichroism (HD), which works as a counterpart of circular dichroism (CD)
created by the interaction between CP light and chiral molecules. The concluding
remarks about the interaction between chiral light and nano-/microstructures are
made at the end of this chapter.
4.1 Introduction
Light is a kind of electromagnetic radiation that carries the detectable energy with
high oscillating frequencies of hundreds of terahertzs for various usages such as
animal vision, illumination and display, information transform, material processing,
optical imaging, energy transfer and storage in plants, heating, nano-fabrication,
remote sensing and medical surgery. Due to the rich diversity in these applications,
the requirement of manipulating light in a highly customized and arbitrary way
increases rapidly with the development of modern technology. The fundamental
physics of tailoring light is the interaction of light with natural or artificial materials
K. Huang (B)
Department of Optics and Optical Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China,
Hefei, China
e-mail: huangk17@ustc.edu.cn
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
E. Kamenetskii (ed.), Chirality, Magnetism and Magnetoelectricity,
Topics in Applied Physics 138,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62844-4_4
75
Chirality and Antiferromagnetism
in Optical Metasurfaces
Kun Huang
Abstract In this chapter, we will introduce optical chiral metasurfaces that modulate
the phase and amplitude of the circularly polarized (CP) light by using orientationrotated artificial subwavelength structures. For high-efficiency dielectric chiral metasurfaces, the nanostructures work as nanoscale half-waveplates that hold the physical
origins of antiferromagnetism by inducing multiple anti-parallel magnetic dipoles.
The interaction between metasurfaces and chiral CP light (carrying the spin angular
momentum) enables polarization meta-optics for the applications such as lens,
grating and hologram. In addition, the optical vortex beams carrying the orbital
angular momentum of light is introduced as another chiral light because the helical
wavefronts with opposite handednesses exhibit the mirror symmetry. Such a chiral
feature of optical vortex beam is used to probe the chirality of micro-structures, i.e.,
helical dichroism (HD), which works as a counterpart of circular dichroism (CD)
created by the interaction between CP light and chiral molecules. The concluding
remarks about the interaction between chiral light and nano-/microstructures are
made at the end of this chapter.
4.1 Introduction
Light is a kind of electromagnetic radiation that carries the detectable energy with
high oscillating frequencies of hundreds of terahertzs for various usages such as
animal vision, illumination and display, information transform, material processing,
optical imaging, energy transfer and storage in plants, heating, nano-fabrication,
remote sensing and medical surgery. Due to the rich diversity in these applications,
the requirement of manipulating light in a highly customized and arbitrary way
increases rapidly with the development of modern technology. The fundamental
physics of tailoring light is the interaction of light with natural or artificial materials
K. Huang (B)
Department of Optics and Optical Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China,
Hefei, China
e-mail: huangk17@ustc.edu.cn
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
E. Kamenetskii (ed.), Chirality, Magnetism and Magnetoelectricity,
Topics in Applied Physics 138,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62844-4_4
75