Control of chirality using metamaterials plays a critical role in a diverse set of advanced photonics applications, such as polarization control, bio-sensing, and polarization-sensitive imaging devices. However, this poses a major challenge, as it primarily involves the geometrical reconfiguration of metamolecules that cannot be adjusted dynamically. Real-world applications require active tuning of the chirality, which can easily manipulate the magnitude, handedness, and spectral range of chiroptical response. Here, enabled by graphene, we theoretically reveal a tunable/switchable achiral metasurface in the near-infrared region. In the model, the achiral metasurface consists of an array of circular holes embedded through a metal/dielectric/metal trilayer incorporated with the graphene sheet, where holes occupy the sites of a rectangular lattice. Circular conversion dichroism (CCD) originates from the mutual orientation between the achiral metasurface and oblique incident wave. The achiral metasurface possesses dual-band sharp features in the CCD spectra, which are tuned over a broad bandwidth by electrically modulating the graphene’s Fermi level. By selecting aluminium as the metal materials, we numerically achieved strong CCD and considerably reduced materials costs with our nanostructures compared with the typically used noble metals such as gold and silver.

Cavity-coupled plasmonic structure is demonstrated to be a simple and effective tool to manipulatelight, enhance the biosensing figure of merit, and control the polarization state. In this Letter, we demonstrate the tunability of the chiroptical effect of cavity-coupled chiral structure, i.e., sandwich chiral metamaterials (SCMs), in whichradiation coupling dominates the interaction between particles. Two types of SCMs whose building blocks are 3D chiral and 2D chiral, respectively, are numerically studied. Distinct responses are observed in these two materials. The chiroptical effect can be effectively manipulated and enhanced in the 2D case, while the SCMs consisting of 3D chiral layers keep the chiroptical effecta constant. A theoretical analysis based on matrix optics is developed to explain the corresponding phenomena, which gives a reasonable agreement with numerical simulations.

Research on light scattering from a large chiral sphere shows that the rainbow phenomenon is different from that of an isotropic sphere. A chiral sphere with certain chirality generates three first-order rainbows. In this Letter, we present a geometric optics interpretation for the phenomenon and make a calculation of the rainbow angles. The ray traces inside the sphere are determined by the reflection and refraction laws of light at the achiral–chiral interface and the chiral–achiral interface. The calculated rainbow angles achieve good agreements with those obtained by the analytical solutions. The effects of chirality and the refractive index of the sphere on rainbow angles are analyzed.

Cholesteric liquid crystals, consisting of chiral molecules, form self-assembled periodic structures exhibiting a photonic bandgap. Their selective reflectivity makes them well suited for a variety of applications; their optical response is therefore of considerable interest. The reflectance and transmittance of finite cholesteric cells is usually calculated numerically. Evanescent modes in the bandgap make the calculations challenging; existing matrix propagation methods cannot describe the reflection and transmission coefficients of thick cholesteric cells accurately. Here we present analytic solutions for the electromagnetic fields in cholesteric cells of finite thickness, and use them to calculate the transmission and reflection spectra. The use of analytic solutions allows for the accurate description of arbitrarily thick cholesteric cells, which would not be possible with only direct numerical methods.