Kavli Affiliate: Richard D. Robinson
| First 5 Authors: Thomas J. Ugras, Thomas J. Ugras, , ,
| Summary:
Reciprocity, the principle that a system response is identical in the forward
path compared to the backward path, is a fundamental concept across physics,
from electrical circuits and optics to acoustics and heat conduction.
Nonreciprocity arises when this symmetry is broken, enabling
directional-dependent behavior. In photonics, nonreciprocity allows control
over the propagation of electromagnetic waves, essential for isolators and
circulators. But achieving optical nonreciprocity typically requires complex
metamaterials, exotic media, or strong external fields. Because of this,
researchers have historically overlooked the possibility that readily available
materials could support nonreciprocal optical behavior, assuming that
conventional systems lack the ability to produce nonreciprocal behavior. In
this work, we challenge that assumption by revisiting the light-matter
interactions of chiroptic and linearly anisotropic media. Through
Stokes-Mueller formalism we derive a simple analytical expression that predicts
a pathway to nonreciprocal absorption and emission of orthogonal linear
polarizations. We test this idea experimentally using solution-processed films
of CdS, CdSe, and CdTe magic-size clusters that possess commensurate circular
dichroism (CD) and linear dichroism (LD)values and find that they can support
this effect, engineering films that exhibit nonreciprocal absorption and
emission of linearly polarized light. Based on the derived expressions and
experiments, several design rules are presented. Our findings reveal that
nonreciprocal linear dichroism and emission can be achieved in readily
processable, macroscopically symmetric materials by harnessing chiral-linear
optical interference. This work opens new opportunities for scalable,
polarization-based photonic control for direction-dependent optical routing,
optical logic, and polarization-multiplexed information encoding.
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