Strong circular dichroism triggered by near-field perturbation

Abstract Circular dichroism of chiral structure can be used in biological sensing and analytical chemistry, which has been extensively explored. However, previous studies on chiral structures are mainly focused on geometric symmetry breaking, further investigation about the effect of the near-field perturbation on the chirality remains unrevealed. In this paper, circular dichroism of the honeycomb-shaped elliptical hole structure is investigated. By discussing the impact of the period of the structure on chirality, it is found that the near-field perturbation can trigger strong circular dichroism without breaking the rotational symmetry and mirror symmetry. Furthermore, the distributions of electric field and Poynting vector are studied to confirm the effect of the near-field perturbation. We believe that our work not only facilitates the understanding between the circularly polarized light and matter, but also provides a new approach for designing chiral structures.