Superchiral light emerging from bound states in the continuum in metasurfaces of Si nanorod dimers

Abstract

Bound states in the continuum (BICs) in all-dielectric metasurfaces enhance light–matter interaction at the nanoscale due to their infinite Q factors and strong field confinement. Among a variety of phenomena already reported, their impact on chiral light has recently attracted great interest. Here we investigate the emergence of intrinsic and extrinsic optical chirality associated with the excitation of BICs in various metasurfaces made of Si nanorod dimers on a quartz substrate, comparing three cases: parallel nanorods (neutral) and shifted and slanted dimers, with/without index-matching superstrate. We analyze both the circular dichroism (CD) of the far-field (FF) interaction and the helicity of the near-field (NF) distribution. We show that the best approach to achieve chiral response in the FF based on extrinsic chirality is to exploit quasi-BICs (q-BICs) appearing in the case of slanted nanorod dimers. By contrast, the helicity density is largely enhanced in the case of shifted dimers, as it presents intrinsic chirality, with values 2 orders of magnitude larger than those of circularly polarized plane waves. These so-called superchiral electromagnetic fields concentrated at the nanoscale within the metasurface hold promise of appealing implications in phenomena such as strong-coupling, photoluminescence emission, or other local light–matter interactions.