Dynamic control of luminescence chirality through achiral metasurfaces

Abstract: Circularly polarized light (CPL) sources are essential for chiroptics, spintronics, quantum optics, and asymmetric photochemistry. However, conventional approaches fail to simultaneously realize a large luminescence dissymmetry factor (glum) and wide-range tuning of glum in a compact device. Chiral luminophores usually suffer from low glum due to their small molecular sizes. Although chiral metasurfaces can enable a large glum, they lack post-fabrication tunability. Here, we demonstrate that it is possible to achieve high-purity circularly polarized luminescence using achiral metasurfaces. These metasurfaces enable optical tuning and even reversal of luminescence chirality by uncovering and utilizing giant near-field chirality. We validate our concept with upconversion nanoparticles and downshifting dye molecules, experimentally achieving a large glum of up to 1.65, which can be actively and continuously tuned between 1.65 and -1.58. Our approach promises important applications in next-generation CPL sources and detectors, and tunable quantum devices.