No Arabic abstract
Fingerprint spectral response of several materials with terahertz electromagnetic radiation indicates that terahertz technology is an effective tool for sensing applications. However, sensing few nanometer thin-film of dielectrics with much longer terahertz waves (1 THz = 0.3 mm) is challenging. Here, we demonstrate a quasi-bound state in the continuum (BIC) resonance for sensing of nanometer scale thin analyte deposited on a flexible metasurface. The large sensitivity originates from strong local field confinement of the quasi-BIC Fano resonance state and extremely low absorption loss of a low-index cyclic olefin copolymer substrate. A minimum thickness of 7 nm thin-film of germanium is sensed on the metasurface, which corresponds to a deep subwavelength length scale of {lambda}/43000, where {lambda} is the resonance wavelength. The low-loss, flexible and large mechanical strength of the quasi-BIC micro structured metamaterial sensor could be an ideal platform for developing ultrasensitive wearable terahertz sensors.
We demonstrate that rotationally symmetric chiral metasurfaces can support arbitrarily sharp resonances with the maximum optical chirality determined by precise shaping of bound states in the continuum (BICs). Being uncoupled from one circular polarisation of light and resonantly coupled to its counterpart, a metasurface hosting the chiral BIC resonance exhibits a narrow peak in the circular dichroism spectrum. We propose a realization of such chiral BIC metasurfaces based on pairs of dielectric bars and validate the concept of maximum chirality by numerical simulations
Metasurface-mediated bound states in the continuum (BIC) provides a versatile platform for light manipulation at subwavelength dimension with diverging radiative quality factor and extreme optical localization. In this work, we employ magnetic dipole quasi-BIC resonance in asymmetric silicon nanobar metasurfaces to realize giant Goos-Hanchen (GH) shift enhancement by more than three orders of wavelength. In sharp contrast to GH shift based on the Brewster dip or transmission-type resonance, the maximum GH shift here is located at the reflection peak with unity reflectance, which can be conveniently detected in the experiment. By adjusting the asymmetric parameter of metasurfaces, the $Q$-factor and GH shift can be modulated accordingly. More interestingly, it is found that GH shift exhibits an inverse quadratic dependence on the asymmetric parameter. Furthermore, we design an ultrasensitive environmental refractive index sensor based on the quasi-BIC enhanced GH shift, with a maximum sensitivity of 1.5$times$10$^{7}$ $mu$m/RIU. Our work not only reveals the essential role of BIC in engineering the basic optical phenomena, but also suggests the way for pushing the performance limits of optical communication devices, information storage, wavelength division de/multiplexers, and ultrasensitive sensors.
We study, both theoretically and experimentally, tunable metasurfaces supporting sharp Fano-resonances inspired by optical bound states in the continuum. We explore the use of arsenic trisulfide (a photosensitive chalcogenide glass) having optical properties which can be finely tuned by light absorption at the post-fabrication stage. We select the resonant wavelength of the metasurface corresponding to the energy below the arsenic trisulfide bandgap, and experimentally control the resonance spectral position via exposure to the light of energies above the bandgap.
Enhancing the light-matter interactions in two-dimensional materials via optical metasurfaces has attracted much attention due to its potential to enable breakthrough in advanced compact photonic and quantum information devices. Here, we theoretically investigate a strong coupling between excitons in monolayer WS$_2$ and quasi-bound states in the continuum (quasi-BIC). In the hybrid structure composed of WS$_2$ coupled with asymmetric titanium dioxide nanobars, a remarkable spectral splitting and typical anticrossing behavior of the Rabi splitting can be observed, and such strong coupling effect can be modulated by shaping the thickness and asymmetry parameter of the proposed metasurfaces. It is found that the balance of line width of the quasi-BIC mode and local electric field enhancement should be considered since both of them affect the strong coupling, which is crucial to the design and optimization of metasurface devices. This work provides a promising way for controlling the light-matter interactions in strong coupling regime and opens the door for the future novel quantum, low-energy, distinctive nanodevices by advanced meta-optical engineering.
Recently, we proposed a metasurface design for chiral sensing that (i) results in enhanced chiroptical signals by more than two orders of magnitude for ultrathin, subwavelength, chiral samples over a uniform and accessible area, (ii) allows for complete measurements of the total chirality (magnitude and sign of both its real and imaginary part), and (iii) offers the possibility for a crucial signal reversal (excitation with reversed polarization) that enables chirality measurements in an absolute manner, i.e., without the need for sample removal. Our design is based on the anisotropic response of the metasurface, rather than the superchirality of the generated near-fields, as in most contemporary nanophotonic-based chiral sensing approaches. Here, we derive analytically, and verify numerically, simple formulas that provide insight to the sensing mechanism and explain how anisotropic metasurfaces, in general, offer additional degrees of freedom with respect to their isotropic counterparts. We provide a detailed discussion of the key functionalities and benefits of our proposed design and we demonstrate practical measurement schemes for the unambiguous determination of an unknown chirality. Last, we provide the design principles towards broadband operation - from near-infrared to near-ultraviolet frequencies - opening the way for highly sensitive nanoscale chiroptical spectroscopy.