Lossless dielectric metasurface with giant intrinsic chirality for terahertz wave

It is difficult for single-layer metal metasurfaces to excite in-plane component of magnetic dipole moment, so achieving giant intrinsic optical chirality remains challenging. Fortunately, displacement current in dielectric metasurfaces can form the in-plane magnetic moment which is not orthogonal to the electric dipole moment and forms intrinsic chirality. Here, we show a lossless all-silicon metasurface which achieves giant intrinsic chirality in terahertz band. The leaky waveguide mode in the chiral silicon pillars simultaneously excite the in-plane electric and magnetic dipole moments, which triggers the spin-selected backward electromagnetic radiation, and then realizes the chiral response. The theoretical value of circular dichroism in the transmission spectrum reaches 69.4%, and the measured one is 43%. Based on the photoconductivity effect of the silicon metasurface, we demonstrate optical modulation of the intrinsic chirality using near-infrared continuous wave. In addition, by arranging the two kinds of meta-atoms which are enantiomers, we show the spin-dependent and tunable near-field image display. This simple-prepared all-silicon metasurface provides a new idea for the design of terahertz chiral meta-devices, and it is expected to be applied in the fields of terahertz polarization imaging or spectral detection.