Optical chirality of membrane metasurfaces with broken in-plane symmetry

Abstract

We study chiroptical properties of single-layer dielectric membrane metasurfaces with broken in-plane symmetry. In sharp contrast to a common belief that chiral optical phenomena require symmetry breaking in the vertical direction, we show that flat single-layer metasurfaces are capable of strong specific chiral effects. Although the single-layer geometry forbids conventional co-polarized circular dichroism, strong resonant conversion circular dichroism appears to be possible in particular wavelength ranges determined by the spectra of photonic eigenmodes. We explore its origin starting with a $C_4$ rotation-symmetric and in-plane mirror-symmetric membrane metasurface and applying to it various in-plane perturbations. Simultaneously breaking of the in-plane mirror symmetry and lifting the rotation symmetry unlocks resonantly enhanced circular conversion dichroism. We derive selection rules for this effect and trace its origin to eigenmode interference and intercoupling using chiral coupled-mode theory.