Electrically-driven chiral emission from plasmonic tunnel junctions

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Xie, Yuanyang, Krasavin, Alexey V., Zayats, Anatoly V.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Xie, Yuanyang
Krasavin, Alexey V.
Zayats, Anatoly V.
author_facet Xie, Yuanyang
Krasavin, Alexey V.
Zayats, Anatoly V.
contents Chirality plays a crucial role in a broad range of processes including light-matter interactions in physics, chemistry and biology, which opens up new applications in nanophotonics, quantum technologies and photochemistry. Quantum tunnelling provides a promising mechanism for light generation at the nanoscale, however the realisation of chiral light emission has remained elusive. Here, by integrating tunnel junctions with chiral plasmonic nanohelicoids, we achieve nanoscale generation of chiral light at a single-particle level. The tunnelling-driven resonant excitation of chiral dipolar modes of the nanohelicoids results in emission of a vortex light beam possessing both spin angular momentum with handedness selectivity of over 0.8 and its orbital counterpart, equal in magnitude and opposite in sign. The developed approach offers a new means for sculpturing photon spin generation at the nanoscale, highlighting its potential for next-generation optical components in display and AR/VR applications, as well as quantum information processing and photochemistry.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_08300
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Electrically-driven chiral emission from plasmonic tunnel junctions
Xie, Yuanyang
Krasavin, Alexey V.
Zayats, Anatoly V.
Optics
Chirality plays a crucial role in a broad range of processes including light-matter interactions in physics, chemistry and biology, which opens up new applications in nanophotonics, quantum technologies and photochemistry. Quantum tunnelling provides a promising mechanism for light generation at the nanoscale, however the realisation of chiral light emission has remained elusive. Here, by integrating tunnel junctions with chiral plasmonic nanohelicoids, we achieve nanoscale generation of chiral light at a single-particle level. The tunnelling-driven resonant excitation of chiral dipolar modes of the nanohelicoids results in emission of a vortex light beam possessing both spin angular momentum with handedness selectivity of over 0.8 and its orbital counterpart, equal in magnitude and opposite in sign. The developed approach offers a new means for sculpturing photon spin generation at the nanoscale, highlighting its potential for next-generation optical components in display and AR/VR applications, as well as quantum information processing and photochemistry.
title Electrically-driven chiral emission from plasmonic tunnel junctions
topic Optics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08300