Giant Helical Dichroism of Single Chiral Nanostructures with Photonic Orbital Angular Momentum

Optical activity, demonstrating the chiral light-matter interaction, has attracted tremendous attention in both fundamental theoretical research and advanced applications of high-efficiency enantioselective sensing and next-generation chiroptical spectroscopic techniques. However, conventional chiroptical responses are normally limited in large assemblies of chiral materials by circularly polarized light, exhibiting extremely weak chiroptical signals in a single chiral nanostructure. Here, we demonstrate that an alternative chiral freedom of light-orbital angular momentum-can be utilized for generating strong helical dichroism in single chiral nanostructures. The helical dichroism by monochromatic vortex beams can unambiguously distinguish the intrinsic chirality of nanostructures, in an excellent agreement with theoretical predictions. The single planar-chiral nanostructure can exhibit giant helical dichroism of ∼20% at the visible wavelength. The vortex-dependent helical dichroism, expanding to single nanostructures and two-dimensional space, has implications for high-efficiency chiroptical detection of planar-chiral nanostructures in chiral optics and nanophotonic systems.