Wandering principal optical axes in van der Waals triclinic materials

Ermolaev, Georgy A. ; Voronin, Kirill V. ; Toksumakov, Adilet N. ; Grudinin, Dmitriy V. ; Fradkin, Ilia M. ; Mazitov, Arslan ; Slavich, Aleksandr S. ; Tatmyshevskiy, Mikhail K. ; Yakubovsky, Dmitry I. ; Solovey, Valentin R. ; Kirtaev, Roman V. ; Novikov, Sergey M. ; Zhukova, Elena S. ; Kruglov, Ivan ; Vyshnevyy, Andrey A. ; Baranov, Denis G. ; Ghazaryan, Davit A. ; Arsenin, Aleksey V. ; Martin-Moreno, Luis ; Volkov, Valentyn S. ; Novoselov, Kostya S.

Resumen: Nature is abundant in material platforms with anisotropic permittivities arising from symmetry reduction that feature a variety of extraordinary optical effects. Principal optical axes are essential characteristics for these effects that define light-matter interaction. Their orientation – an orthogonal Cartesian basis that diagonalizes the permittivity tensor, is often assumed stationary. Here, we show that the low-symmetry triclinic crystalline structure of van der Waals rhenium disulfide and rhenium diselenide is characterized by wandering principal optical axes in the space-wavelength domain with above π/2 degree of rotation for in-plane components. In turn, this leads to wavelength-switchable propagation directions of their waveguide modes. The physical origin of wandering principal optical axes is explained using a multi-exciton phenomenological model and ab initio calculations. We envision that the wandering principal optical axes of the investigated low-symmetry triclinic van der Waals crystals offer a platform for unexplored anisotropic phenomena and nanophotonic applications.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-45266-3

Año: 2024

Publicado en: Nature communications 15, 1 (2024), 1552 [8 pp.]
ISSN: 2041-1723

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/Q-MAD

Tipo y forma: Article (Published version)