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arXiv · 2604.14589

Nonlinear chiral response governed by meta-atom rotation

Dhruv Hariharan·Pavel Tonkaev·Felix Ulrich Brikh·Brijesh Kumar·Ivan Toftul·Ivan Sinev·Hatice Altug·Yuri Kivshar
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Abstract

Chiral photonics provides powerful routes for controlling the light handedness, yet nonlinear chiral responses are typically associated with intricate three-dimensional systems. Here, we demonstrate that strong nonlinear chirality can emerge and be precisely tuned in planar metasurfaces. We study free-standing membrane metasurfaces composed of periodic lattices of tilted elliptic holes, which preserve out-of-plane mirror symmetry while breaking all in-plane mirror symmetries through the in-plane rotation of the meta-atoms. We demonstrate that optical resonances play a decisive role in governing the nonlinear chiral response, enabling pronounced circular dichroism in third-harmonic generation even when symmetry is broken only in plane. We experimentally reveal strong nonlinear chiral response from the metasurfaces and a striking swapping of nonlinear chiral channels for complementary meta-atom rotation angles. This behaviour arises from the interplay between lattice symmetry and meta-atom orientation, which controls the symmetry of the resonant modes and the resulting nonlinear selection rules. Our results establish meta-atom rotation as a powerful mechanism for engineering nonlinear chiral responses in planar metasurfaces, opening new opportunities for tunable chiral nonlinear metaphotonics devices.

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Dhruv Hariharan, Pavel Tonkaev, Felix Ulrich Brikh, Brijesh Kumar, Ivan Toftul, Ivan Sinev, Hatice Altug, Yuri Kivshar. 2026-04-16. Nonlinear chiral response governed by meta-atom rotation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.14589

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