Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems - Unit of Naples

Congratulations to Gianluigi Zito, Silvia Romano, Stefano Cabrini, Giuseppe Calafiore, Anna Chiara De Luca, Erika Penzo, and Vito Mocella for their last paper on Optica, "Observation of spin-polarized directive coupling of light at bound states in the continuum"!

Spin-polarized directive coupling of light associated with the photonic quantum spin-Hall effect (QSHE) is a nanoscale phenomenon based on strong spin–orbit interaction that has recently attracted significant attention. Herein, we discuss the experimental manifestation of QSHE intrinsic in the Bloch waves associated with a bound state in the continuum (BIC) of a dielectric photonic crystal metasurface (PhCM). We show numerically that BICs in nanoscale PhCMs have photonic spin angular momentum density transverse to the orbital momentum not only at the interfaces but also inside the confining dielectric medium. Then, we experimentally demonstrate that the fundamental Bloch waves of the BIC mode, macroscopically amplified on resonance, propagate along the symmetry axes o f the PhCM obeying spin-momentum locking also at normal incidence, i.e., with no symmetry breaking. This BIC-enhanced spin-directive coupling of light may enable versatile implementations of spin-optical structures, paving the way for novel photonic spin multiplatform devices.

Observation of spin-polarized directive coupling of light at bound states in the continuum