Unambiguous definition of handedness for locally chiral light

TY - JOUR

T1 - Unambiguous definition of handedness for locally chiral light

AU - Neufeld, Ofer

AU - Cohen, Oren

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.

PY - 2022/2

Y1 - 2022/2

N2 - Synthetic chiral light fields were recently introduced as a novel source of chirality [Ayuso, Nat. Photonics 13, 866 (2019)10.1038/s41566-019-0531-2]. This locally chiral light spans a three-dimensional polarization that plots a chiral trajectory in space-time, leading to huge nonlinear chiral signals upon interactions with chiral media. The degree of chirality of this new form of light was defined, characterized, and shown to be proportional to the chiral signal in high harmonic generation and photo-emission. However, the sign of the light's chirality-its "handedness"-has not yet been defined. Standard definitions of helicity are inapplicable for locally chiral light due to its complex three-dimensional structure. Here, we define an unambiguous handedness for locally chiral fields and employ it in practical calculations.

AB - Synthetic chiral light fields were recently introduced as a novel source of chirality [Ayuso, Nat. Photonics 13, 866 (2019)10.1038/s41566-019-0531-2]. This locally chiral light spans a three-dimensional polarization that plots a chiral trajectory in space-time, leading to huge nonlinear chiral signals upon interactions with chiral media. The degree of chirality of this new form of light was defined, characterized, and shown to be proportional to the chiral signal in high harmonic generation and photo-emission. However, the sign of the light's chirality-its "handedness"-has not yet been defined. Standard definitions of helicity are inapplicable for locally chiral light due to its complex three-dimensional structure. Here, we define an unambiguous handedness for locally chiral fields and employ it in practical calculations.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85125840531&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevA.105.023514

DO - 10.1103/PhysRevA.105.023514

M3 - 文章

AN - SCOPUS:85125840531

SN - 2469-9926

VL - 105

JO - Physical Review A

JF - Physical Review A

IS - 2

M1 - 023514

ER -