Numerical study to explore nonlocal behavior for near-field light-matter interaction in a two-dimensional hyperbolic metamaterial

Nonlocal effects play key roles in artificially engineered metamaterials, determining novel effects like artificial chirality, long-range energy transport, etc. Metal nanowire-based hyperbolic metamaterials (HMM) can show strong coupling with quantum emitters, chiral emission from the coupled system of both the achiral subsystems of HMM and an ensemble of quantum emitters, etc., in experiments. In this work, we numerically explore the nonlocal effect of the HMM interacting with a dipole emitter at the near-field, using the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. We observe enticing results for the excitation source polarization-dependent nonlocality, which impacts the light-matter interactions. This work could help understand the benefits of nonlocal energy and information transport through the HMM medium, which explores ways to control the application of HMM in the device architecture for novel microscopic techniques and information transport.