Abstract

Highly accurate sensing of chiral molecules is crucial in drug development as one mirror image (enantiomer) of a chiral molecule can be toxic while the other mirror image can be healing. As the rate of absorption of a chiral molecule is different when illuminated with left-handed circularly polarized light (LCPL) than when illuminated with right-handed circularly polarized light (RCPL), this interaction asymmetry can be used to probe the chirality of molecules. Circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy essentially relies on this interaction asymmetry though measured signals are typically very weak [1]. We propose to enhance this light-matter interaction using superchiral light with a fully dielectric structure that can be integrated with on-chip photonics. Here, light has an optical chirality (C) that exceeds that of circularly polarized light (CPL). Chiral plasmonic nanostructures were already demonstrated to have superchiral electromagnetic near fields and were used to sense chirality of molecules with enhanced sensitivity [2].

© 2017 IEEE