Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 15, 2025

Fabrication And Characterization Of Photonic Crystal Slow Light Waveguides And Cavities
Published on: November 30, 2012
Chiral lasing enabled by strong coupling.
Huachun Deng1, Xiong Jiang1, Yao Zhang1
1Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Key Lab of Micro-Nano Optoelectronic Information System, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Optoelectronic Materials and Intelligent Photonic Systems, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen 518055, P. R. China.
Researchers engineered chiral metasurfaces to achieve high-purity chiral laser emission by coupling two resonances. This breakthrough enables directional chiral lasing, overcoming limitations of conventional quasi-bound states in the continuum (quasi-BIC) lasers.
Area of Science:
- Photonics
- Metamaterials
- Quantum Optics
Background:
- Chiral quasi-bound states in the continuum (quasi-BICs) are high-Q resonances in photonic structures.
- These states support chiral lasing but are typically limited to vertical emission.
- Engineering in-plane and out-of-plane asymmetries breaks symmetry-protected optical states.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore the coupling between two resonances in a chiral metasurface.
- To introduce a novel mechanism for high-purity chiral laser emission.
- To enable directional chiral lasing beyond conventional vertical emission.
Main Methods:
- Engineered a chiral metasurface to induce strong coupling between two resonances with orthogonal polarizations.
- Utilized the inherent phase difference of resonances for coherent destruction of the decay channel.
- Experimentally verified the mechanism through transmission spectra, angle-resolved photoluminescence, and laser emission measurements.
Main Results:
- Achieved strong coupling between two nearly orthogonal polarized resonances in the engineered chiral metasurface.
- Demonstrated that the phase difference maximizes chirality in one of the hybrid modes, leading to high-Q factor.
- Successfully realized high-purity chiral laser emission.
Conclusions:
- The proposed mechanism allows for breaking restrictions on conventional chiral quasi-BIC lasing.
- This approach enables the realization of chiral emission at any designed direction.
- The findings pave the way for versatile chiral photonic devices.
Related Concept Videos
Chirality
Chiral objects exhibit a sense of handedness when they interact with another chiral object. For example, our left foot can only fit in the left shoe and not in the right shoe. Achiral objects — objects that have...
Spin–Spin Coupling: Two-Bond Coupling (Geminal Coupling)
The central atom need not be NMR-active because its electrons are affected by the electron polarization of the spin-active atoms. However, spin information is transmitted less effectively than in one-bond coupling, and 2J values are usually weaker than 1J values. The energy of...
¹H NMR: Long-Range Coupling
In alkenes, spin information is communicated via σ–π overlap, as seen in allylic (four-bond) and homoallylic (five-bond) couplings. These coupling interactions are stronger when the σ bond is parallel to the alkene...
Chirality in Nature
Spin–Spin Coupling: One-Bond Coupling
NMR Spectroscopy: Spin–Spin Coupling

