2021/05/27 by Christopher R. Gubbin, Gubbin, Christopher R., Simone De Liberato +1
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Optics (physics.optics) #Plasmonic and Surface Plasmon Research #Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2105.13219
openalex publication_date 2021/05/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
When mid-infrared light interacts with nanoscale polar dielectric structures optical phonon propagation cannot be ignored, leading to a rich nonlocal phenomenology which we have only recently started to uncover. In properly crafted nanodevices this includes the creation of polaritonic excitations with hybrid longitudinal-transverse nature, which are predicted to allow energy funnelling from longitudinal electrical currents to far-field transverse radiation. In this work we study the physics of these longitudinal-transverse polaritons in a dielectric nanolayer in which the nonlocality strongly couples epsilon-near-zero modes to longitudinal phonons. After having calculated the system's spectrum solving Maxwell's equations, we develop an analytical polaritonic theory able to transparently quantify the nonlocality-mediated coupling as a function of the system parameters. Such a theory provides a powerful tool for the study of longitudinal-transverse polariton interactions and we use it to determine the conditions required for the hybrid modes to appear.