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Researchers at the University of Ottawa have made a discovery that changes what we know about light and materials. They found that engineered achiral (symmetric) materials, called achiral plasmonic metasurfaces, can absorb light differently depending on the handedness of the wavefront of light. This was surprising because, for years, such materials were found to be indifferent to any optical probes and do not show such selective absorption.

The research, conducted over the past year at uOttawa's Advanced Research Complex (ARC), was led by Ravi Bhardwaj, Professor, Department of Physics at the University of Ottawa and Ph.D. student Ashish Jain.

Collaborators include Howard Northfield, Research Engineer, and colleagues Ebrahim Karimi, Canada Research Chair in Structured Light and Associate Professor of Physics, and Pierre Berini, University Research Chair in Surface Plasmon Photonics and Professor of Electrical Engineering.

The team used a special light tool developed by Professor Karimi's Structural Quantum Optics (SQO) group and fabricated the necessary structures with the help of Howard Northfield and Professor Berini. Their findings showed that this selective absorption happens because of interactions between different parts of the light and the material.

The research is published in the journal ACS Nano.

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