Abstract
Not only physical objects, but also electromagnetic fields can exhibit chiral properties. This chiral nature of light leads to chiral interactions between such fields and chiral media. The results of these interactions depend on the mutual handedness of the field and the medium. Therefore, such interactions are the basis of chiroptical spectroscopy. In this chapter, we introduce optical chirality as a measure for the chiral interaction strength of electromagnetic fields. For this purpose, we derive the excitation rate of a chiral molecule in dependence of the optical chirality of the external electromagnetic field. Subsequently, we analyze the optical chirality of different field distributions and introduce the concept of chiral plasmonic near-field sources, which are metallic nanostructures designed to provide strong optical chirality in their near-fields. Additional design criteria that should be fulfilled by the near-field distribution occur, if these near-field sources are intended for highly sensitive enantiomer discrimination. Furthermore, we motivate that not only the nanostructure, but also the illumination must be considered to characterize a chiral plasmonic near-field source.
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Notes
- 1.
In some literature, “optical chirality” is used for chiroptical far-field effects (mostly, CD). In this book, it always refers to the quantity defined via (4.1).
- 2.
Note that this is consistent with the signs of the Jones vectors for CPL in the detector’s view convention.
- 3.
Similar considerations can be made for spherical waves . In this case, OC additionally scales with the radius r, similar to the intensity of the wave.
- 4.
We will discuss the chiroptical near-field response of the gammadion in more detail in Sect. 5.1.1.
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Schäferling, M. (2017). Chiral Properties of Light. In: Chiral Nanophotonics. Springer Series in Optical Sciences, vol 205. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42264-0_4
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