Chiral Nonlinear Polaritonics with van der Waals Metasurfaces

Abstract

In the strong-coupling regime, the interaction between light and matter reaches a hybridization state where the photonic and material components are inseparably linked. Using tailored states of light to break symmetries in such systems can facilitate the development of novel non-equilibrium quantum materials. Chiral optical cavities offer a promising approach for this, enabling either temporal or spatial symmetry-breaking, both of which are unachievable with conventional mirror cavities. For spatial symmetry-breaking, a cavity must discriminate the handedness of circularly polarized light, a functionality uniquely provided by chiral metamaterials. Here, we propose and demonstrate experimentally a chiral transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) metasurface with broken out-of-plane symmetry, allowing for the selective formation of self-hybridized exciton-polaritons with specific handedness. Our metasurface maintains maximal chirality for oblique incidence up to 20°, significantly outperforming all previously known designs, thereby transforming the angle of incidence from a constraint into a new degree of freedom for sub-nanometer-precise tuning of the cavity's resonant wavelength. Moreover, we study the chiral strong-coupling regime in nonlinear experiments and reveal the polariton-driven nature of chiral third-harmonic generation. Our results demonstrate a clear pathway towards van der Waals (vdW) metasurfaces as a novel and potent platform for chiral polaritonics with implications in a wide range of photonics research, such as non-reciprocal photonic devices and valleytronics.