Polaritonic Vortices with a Half-Integer Charge

Lin Xiong, Yutao Li, Dorri Halbertal, Michael Sammon, Zhiyuan Sun, Song Liu, James H. Edgar, Tony Low, Michael M. Fogler, Cory R. Dean, Andrew J. Millis, D. N. Basov

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

Topological spin textures are field arrangements that cannot be continuously deformed to a fully polarized state. In particular, merons are topological textures characterized by half-integer topological charge ±1/2 and vortex-like swirling patterns at large distances. Merons have been studied previously in the context of cosmology, fluid dynamics, condensed matter physics and plasmonics. Here, we visualized optical spin angular momentum of phonon polaritons that resembles nanoscale meron spin textures. Phonon polaritons, hybrids of infrared photons and phonons in hexagonal boron nitride, were excited by circularly polarized light incident on a ring-shaped antenna and imaged using infrared near-field techniques. The polariton field reveals a half-integer topological charge determined by the handedness of the incident beam. Our phonon polaritonic platform opens up new pathways to create, control, and visualize topological textures.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)9256-9261
Number of pages6
JournalNano letters
Volume21
Issue number21
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 10 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Chemical Society.

Keywords

  • meron
  • near-field microscopy
  • optical vortex
  • phonon polariton
  • topology

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