Chiral nonlinear polaritonics with van der Waals metasurfaces

Chiral optical cavities are crucial for the development of nonequilibrium quantum materials by discriminating and selectively coupling to light of a specific circular polarization, but fundamentally cannot be realized with conventional mirror cavities. Here, we demonstrate this unique functionality by developing a monolithic transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) metasurface with broken out-of-plane symmetry, allowing for the selective formation of self-hybridized chiral exciton-polaritons. Our metasurface maintains maximal chirality for oblique incidence up to 20°, thereby outperforming all previously known designs. Moreover, we study the chiral strong-coupling regime in nonlinear experiments and reveal polaritonic signatures in chiral third-harmonic generation. Our results position maximally chiral van der Waals (vdW) metasurfaces as a versatile platform for tunable chiral polaritonics with applications in nonreciprocal photonic devices and valleytronics.

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Publication Details

Journal
Science Advances
Published
2026-03-27
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aeb5631
Primary Topic
Strong Light-Matter Interactions
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Chiral nonlinear polaritonics with van der Waals metasurfaces

Andreas Tittl, Stefan Alexander Maier, Luca Sortino, Thomas Possmayer et al.
Science Advances
Strong Light-Matter Interactions
article

Chiral nonlinear polaritonics with van der Waals metasurfaces

Andreas Tittl, Stefan Alexander Maier, Luca Sortino, Thomas Possmayer, M. V. Gorkunov, Leonardo de S. Menezes, Jonas Biechteler, Dmytro Gryb, Connor Heimig, Michael Hirler, Yuri Kivshar, Alexander A. Antonov, Thomas Weber
article en

Abstract

Chiral optical cavities are crucial for the development of nonequilibrium quantum materials by discriminating and selectively coupling to light of a specific circular polarization, but fundamentally cannot be realized with conventional mirror cavities. Here, we demonstrate this unique functionality by developing a monolithic transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) metasurface with broken out-of-plane symmetry, allowing for the selective formation of self-hybridized chiral exciton-polaritons. Our metasurface maintains maximal chirality for oblique incidence up to 20°, thereby outperforming all previously known designs. Moreover, we study the chiral strong-coupling regime in nonlinear experiments and reveal polaritonic signatures in chiral third-harmonic generation. Our results position maximally chiral van der Waals (vdW) metasurfaces as a versatile platform for tunable chiral polaritonics with applications in nonreciprocal photonic devices and valleytronics.

Science AdvancesVol. 12(13)
Australian National University (AU), Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (BR), Kurchatov Institute (RU), Nanosystems Initiative Munich (DE), A.V. Shubnikov Institute of Crystallography (RU), Quantum Technologies (Sweden) (SE), Imperial College London (GB), Monash University (AU), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE)
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