Demonstration of extrinsic chirality of photoluminescence with semiconductor-metal hybrid nanowires

Abstract

Chiral optical response is an inherent property of molecules and nanostructures, which cannot be superimposed on their mirror images. In specific cases, optical chirality can be observed also for symmetric structures. This so-called extrinsic chirality requires that the mirror symmetry is broken by the geometry of the structure together with the incident or emission angle of light. From the fabrication point of view, the benefit of extrinsic chirality is that there is no need to induce structural chirality at nanoscale. This paper reports demonstration extrinsic chirality of photoluminescence emission from asymmetrically Au-coated GaAs-AlGaAs-GaAs core-shell nanowires fabricated on silicon by a completely lithography-free self-assembled method. In particular, the extrinsic chirality of PL emission is shown to originate from a strong symmetry breaking of fundamental HE11 waveguide modes due to the presence of the asymmetric Au coating, causing preferential emission of left and right-handed emissions in different directions in the far field.