Highly tunable directional optical antennas with large local angular chiroptical effects

Abstract

The highly localized field of the plasmonic nanostructures can amplify the chiroptical effects. While most efforts have been focused on spectral responses in real space for chiroptical effects of the plasmonic nanostructures, we present alternative extrinsic chiroptical effects with respect to angular emission patterns in momentum space based on the designed directional nanoantennas. First, the chiroptical effects with respect to spectral responses for the antenna are investigated and decomposed based on the multipolar expansion method. Through the traditional spectral responses, there seems to be no chirality. However, when we turn to the angular emission patterns in the momentum space for the nanoantenna, large local angular chiroptical effects are observed. The chiroptical effects assessed by the difference of azimuth angle emission lobes under left- and right-circularly polarized light illumination can reach 180°. The multipolar analysis combined with Green's function method in a stratified medium is constructed to explain the unidirectional emission and chiral phenomenon, which agrees well with the simulation results. Moreover, the local angular chiroptical effects are also highly tunable by changing the refractive index of the surrounding medium. Our study on local angular chiroptical effects provides a new perspective to understand the chirality, and the large extrinsic chirality for the nanoantenna sheds a new light for biosensing and chiral photon detection.