Twist-tunable in-plane anisotropic polaritonic crystals
van der Waals (vdW) materials supporting phonon polaritons (PhPs) – light coupled to lattice vibrations – have gathered significant interest because of their intrinsic anisotropy and low losses. In particular, α-MoO3 supports PhPs with in-plane anisotropic propagation, which has been exploited to tu...
| Autores: | , , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Formato: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2024 |
| País: | España |
| Recursos: | Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) |
| Repositorio: | DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:digital.csic.es:10261/381651 |
| Acesso em linha: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/381651 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palavra-chave: | Hyperbolic polaritons Phonon polaritons Polaritonic crystals Twisted heterostructures van der Waals materials Nanophotonics |
| Resumo: | van der Waals (vdW) materials supporting phonon polaritons (PhPs) – light coupled to lattice vibrations – have gathered significant interest because of their intrinsic anisotropy and low losses. In particular, α-MoO3 supports PhPs with in-plane anisotropic propagation, which has been exploited to tune the optical response of twisted bilayers and trilayers. Additionally, various studies have explored the realization of polaritonic crystals (PCs) – lattices with periods comparable to the polariton wavelength. PCs consisting of hole arrays etched in α-MoO3 slabs exhibit Bragg resonances dependent on the angle between the crystallographic axes and the lattice vectors. However, such PC concept, with a fixed orientation and size of its geometrical parameters, constrains practical applications and introduces additional scattering losses due to invasive fabrication processes. Here, we demonstrate a novel PC concept that overcomes these limitations, enabling low-loss optical tuning. It comprises a rotatable pristine α-MoO3 layer located on a periodic hole array fabricated in a metallic layer. Our design prevents degradation of the α-MoO3 optical properties caused by fabrication, preserving its intrinsic low-loss and in-plane anisotropic propagation of PhPs. The resulting PC exhibits rotation of the Bloch modes, which is experimentally visualized by scanning near-field microscopy. In addition, we experimentally determine the polaritons momentum and reconstruct their band structure. These results pave the way for mechanically tunable nano-optical components based on polaritons for potential lasing, sensing, or energy harvesting applications. |
|---|