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Unidirectional unpolarized luminescence emission via vortex excitation

Nature Photonics volume 17, pages 601–606 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Controlling the direction of light emission on the subwavelength scale is a key capability for quantum information processing and optical imaging in photonics and biology1,2,3,4,5. The spin–orbit interaction of light is widely adopted for dynamically tuning the direction of circularly polarized photoluminescence (PL), but this is challenging to accomplish for many luminescence materials, which typically generate unpolarized luminescence. Here, we report optical control of unidirectional emission of unpolarized luminescence in a spatially symmetric nanopillar lattice assisted by photonic orbital angular momenta. The orientation of anti-Stokes shift PL emissions can be controlled by the helicity of incident vortex beams. The experimental directionality of unpolarized PL emission in the one-dimensional nanopillar lattice can reach 0.59, which is markedly stronger than that possible by a spin mechanism. Our findings thus offer a new promising approach for tuneable nanoscale optical control of emission.

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Fig. 1: Concept of directional emission of unpolarized luminescence by vortex beams.
Fig. 2: Experimental measurements of unidirectional propagation in the nanopillar lattice.
Fig. 3: Numerical simulations of unidirectional propagation by vortex sources.
Fig. 4: OAM-dependent PL unidirectional emission.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61927814, 52122511, 52075516, 61805230, 62105319 and U20A20290; W.D., J.L., S.J. and Y.H.), the USTC Research Funds of the Double First-Class Initiative (Grant No. YD2090002005; W.D.), the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2021YFF0502700; W.D.) and the Foundation of Equipment Development Department (Grant No. 6140922010901; W.D.). J.N. acknowledges support from the start-up funding of the University of Science and Technology of China and the CAS Talents Program. We thank the USTC Center for Micro and Nanoscale Research and Fabrication. C.W.Q. is supported by the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore under Competitive Research Program Award NRF-CRP22-2019-0006.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Jincheng Ni, Shengyun Ji.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Jincheng Ni & Cheng-Wei Qiu

  2. Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and Design of Materials, Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

    Jincheng Ni, Shengyun Ji, Zhenyu Wang, Shunli Liu, Yanlei Hu, Yang Chen, Jiawen Li, Jiaru Chu & Dong Wu

  3. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Shengyun Ji

  4. Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications, Institute of Photonics Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China

    Xiangping Li

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Contributions

J.N. and C.W.Q. conceived the idea and developed the theory. S.J., S.L. and Z.W. performed the experiments. J.N. performed the simulations. J.N., Y.C., X.L. and S.J. analysed the data. J.N., C.W.Q. and D.W. wrote the manuscript. C.W.Q. and D.W. supervised the project. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Dong Wu or Cheng-Wei Qiu.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–17, Notes 1–6, Table 1 and References.

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Ni, J., Ji, S., Wang, Z. et al. Unidirectional unpolarized luminescence emission via vortex excitation. Nat. Photon. 17, 601–606 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-023-01226-9

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