Strong coupling of chiral light with chiral matter: a macroscopic study

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Fundamental studies of the interaction between chiral light and chiral matter are crucial for advancing technologies that can optically distinguish different left and right enantiomers of chiral organic molecules. One promising approach in developing such technology involves creating a resonator that sustains photonic modes with non-zero electromagnetic handedness, a feature that causes these modes to interact differently with chiral molecular enantiomers. When chiral molecules are positioned in resonator hotspots, they can alter the system’s characteristics due to their inherent electric and magnetic transition dipole moments. In this study, we explore this interaction by incorporating the Lorentz pole into the macroscopic parameters of the chiral medium: dielectric permittivity, magnetic permeability, and chirality coefficient. The latter, also known as the Pasteur parameter, is a dimensionless macroscopic measure indicating the medium’s chirality, interlinking electric and magnetic fields in the constitutive relations. We show that introducing the Lorentz pole into these macroscopic material parameters of the chiral medium results in chiral strong coupling between light and matter, with the strength of coupling determined by the chiralities of both the medium and the photonic mode. Our findings provide a foundation for designing advanced optical sensors that can selectively detect chiral molecules, with potential applications in pharmaceuticals, chemistry, and materials science.