Long-propagating ghost phonon polaritons enabled by selective mode excitation

Manuka Suriyage; Qingyi Zhou; Hao Qin; Xueqian Sun; Zhuoyuan Lu; Stefan A. Maier; Zongfu Yu; Yuerui Lu

doi:10.1038/s41377-025-01925-8

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Long-propagating ghost phonon polaritons enabled by selective mode excitation

Original Articles

- Long-propagating ghost phonon polaritons enabled by selective mode excitation
- Light: Science & Applications Vol. 14, Issue 9, Pages: 2685-2695(2025)
- Affiliations：
  
  1.School of Engineering, College of Engineering, Computing & Cybernetics, the Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
  2.Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of WisconsinMadison, Madison, WI 53706, USA
  3.Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK
  4.ARC Centre of Excellence in Quantum Computation and Communication Technology ANU node, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
  5.School of Physics and Astronomy, Monash University Clayton Campus, Melbourne, VIC 3800, Australia
- Author bio：
  
  Zongfu Yu (zyu54@wisc.edu)
  Yuerui Lu (yuerui.lu@anu.edu.au)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-025-01925-8
  CLC：
- Received：11 September 2024，
  
  Revised：2025-04-16，
  
  Accepted：20 June 2025，
  
  Published Online：26 July 2025，
  
  Published：30 September 2025
- Accepted：
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Suriyage, M. et al. Long-propagating ghost phonon polaritons enabled by selective mode excitation. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 2685-2695 (2025).
DOI：

Suriyage, M. et al. Long-propagating ghost phonon polaritons enabled by selective mode excitation. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 2685-2695 (2025). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-025-01925-8.

摘要

Abstract

The ability to precisely control the excitation of phonon polaritons (PhPs) provides unique opportunities for various nanophotonic applications

such as on-chip optical communication

quantum information processing

and controlled thermal radiation. Recently

ghost hyperbolic phonon polaritons (g-HPs) have been discovered

which exhibit in-plane hyperbolic dispersion on the surface and oblique wavefronts in the bulk. These g-HPs exhibit long-range

ray-like propagation

which is highly desirable. However

selective excitation of polaritonic modes and flexible control over the directionality of g-HPs remains an open problem. In this work

we experimentally demonstrate that changing the shape of the launching micro/nano antenna allows for control over the polariton mode excitation. Using a single asymmetric triangular gold antenna fabricated on a calcite crystal surface

we showcase highly directional g-HP excitation through selectively exciting desirable polariton modes. Our near-field imaging experiments verify that the g-HP excited by the triangular antenna can propagate over 80 microns

which is consistent with our numerical predictions. Overall

by combining g-HP theory with structural engineering

our work has further developed the potential of such anisotropic materials

enabling unexpected control over g-HPs

thus opening opportunities for various applications in mid-IR optoelectronics.

关键词

Keywords

references

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