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Letter
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Natural hyperbolic materials with dielectric permittivities of opposite sign along different principal axes can confine long-wavelength electromagnetic waves down to the nanoscale, well below the diffraction limit. This has been demonstrated using hyperbolic phonon polaritons (HPP) in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) and -MoO3, among other materials. However, HPP dissipation at ambient conditions is substantial and its fundamental limits remain unexplored1,2. Here, we exploit cryogenic nano-infrared imaging to investigate propagating HPP in isotopically pure hBN and naturally abundant -MoO3 crystals. Close to liquid-nitrogen temperatures, the losses for HPP in isotopic hBN drop significantly, resulting in propagation lengths in excess of 25 micrometers, with lifetimes exceeding 5 picoseconds, thereby surpassing prior reports on such highly-confined polaritonic modes. Our nanoscale, temperature-dependent imaging reveals the relevance of acoustic phonons in hyperbolic polariton damping and will be instrumental in mitigating such losses for miniaturized middle infrared technologies operating at the liquid-nitrogen temperatures.
Keywords
hyperbolic materials, photonics, nanophysics, phonon polaritons
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This is a preprint, a preliminary version of a manuscript that has not completed peer review at a journal. Research Square does not conduct peer review prior to posting preprints. The posting of a preprint on this server should not be interpreted as an endorsement of its validity or suitability for dissemination as established information or for guiding clinical practice.
Letter
Badges
Prescreen
This manuscript passed our Prescreen assessment
Complete author information
Appropriate declaration statements
Potential risks to human health
Prescreen
History
CURRENT STATUS: Posted
Version 1
Posted 10 Mar, 2021
No community comments so far
Metrics
Comments: 0
PDF Downloads: ...
HTML Views: ...
License:
This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License. Read Full License
Natural hyperbolic materials with dielectric permittivities of opposite sign along different principal axes can confine long-wavelength electromagnetic waves down to the nanoscale, well below the diffraction limit. This has been demonstrated using hyperbolic phonon polaritons (HPP) in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) and -MoO3, among other materials. However, HPP dissipation at ambient conditions is substantial and its fundamental limits remain unexplored1,2. Here, we exploit cryogenic nano-infrared imaging to investigate propagating HPP in isotopically pure hBN and naturally abundant -MoO3 crystals. Close to liquid-nitrogen temperatures, the losses for HPP in isotopic hBN drop significantly, resulting in propagation lengths in excess of 25 micrometers, with lifetimes exceeding 5 picoseconds, thereby surpassing prior reports on such highly-confined polaritonic modes. Our nanoscale, temperature-dependent imaging reveals the relevance of acoustic phonons in hyperbolic polariton damping and will be instrumental in mitigating such losses for miniaturized middle infrared technologies operating at the liquid-nitrogen temperatures.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
The full text of this article is available to read as a PDF.
There is NO Competing Interest.
This is a list of supplementary files associated with this preprint. Click to download.
- SupplementaryInformation.docx
Supplementary Information
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