Phys.org December 10, 2024
An international team of researchers (Israel, USA – UT Austin, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Germany, Italy) harnessed the potential of radially polarized photons for classical and quantum communication applications to demonstrate an on-chip, room-temperature device, which generated highly directional radially polarized photons at very high rates. The photons were emitted from a giant CdSe/CdS colloidal quantum dot (gQD) accurately positioned at the tip of a metal nanocone centered inside a hybrid metal-dielectric bullseye antenna. They showed that the emitted photons could have a very high degree of radial polarization, based on a quantitative metric. According to the researchers their study emphasized the importance of accurate gQD positioning for optimal radial polarization purity through extensive experiments and simulations, which contributed to the fundamental understanding of radial polarization in nanostructured devices and paved the way for implementation of such systems in practical applications using structured quantum light… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Generation of radially polarized photons in concept. Credit: ACS Photonics, Vol 11/Issue 10, 2 October 2024