volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

Ghost surface polaritons (GSPs) in anisotropic materials exhibit an unusual bi-state nature with a complex-valued out-of-plane wavevector, providing unique opportunities for nanoscale light manipulation. However, the exploration and application of GSPs have been limited by the scarcity of natural crystals. Here, we revisit GSPs from the perspective of transformation optics. By introducing a shift parameter, we establish a mapping between material tensors and ghost modes, demonstrating the existence of GSPs at various transformed uniaxial interfaces. It is further shown that the wavefront can be modulated via shift parameters, enabling precise control of GSP propagation. Our study provides new insight into GSPs and establishes a versatile framework for their flexible manipulation.

1. Dai, S., Z. Fei, Q. Ma, A. S. Rodin, M. Wagner, A. S. McLeod, M. K. Liu, W. Gannett, W. Regan, et al. "Tunable phonon polaritons in atomically thin van der Waals crystals of boron nitride," Science, Vol. 343, No. 6175, 1125-1129, 2014.
doi:10.1126/science.1246833 Google Scholar

2. Dai, S., Q. Ma, T. Andersen, A. S. Mcleod, Z. Fei, M. K. Liu, M. Wagner, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, M. Thiemens, F. Keilmann, P. Jarillo-Herrero, M. M. Fogler, and D. N. Basov, "Subdiffractional focusing and guiding of polaritonic rays in a natural hyperbolic material," Nature Communications, Vol. 6, No. 1, 6963, 2015.
doi:10.1038/ncomms7963 Google Scholar

3. Ma, Weiliang, Pablo Alonso-González, Shaojuan Li, Alexey Y. Nikitin, Jian Yuan, Javier Martín-Sánchez, Javier Taboada-Gutiérrez, Iban Amenabar, Peining Li, Saül Vélez, Christopher Tollan, Zhigao Dai, Yupeng Zhang, Sharath Sriram, Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh, Shuit-Tong Lee, Rainer Hillenbrand, and Qiaoliang Bao, "In-plane anisotropic and ultra-low-loss polaritons in a natural van der Waals crystal," Nature, Vol. 562, No. 7728, 557-562, 2018.
doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0618-9 Google Scholar

4. Li, P., I. Dolado, F. J. Alfaro-Mozaz, F. Casanova, L. E. Hueso, S. Liu, J. H. Edgar, A. Y. Nikitin, S. Vélez, and R. Hillenbrand, "Infrared hyperbolic metasurface based on nanostructured van der Waals materials," Science, Vol. 359, No. 6378, 892-896, 2018.
doi:10.1126/science.aaq1704 Google Scholar

5. Caldwell, Joshua D., Andrey V. Kretinin, Yiguo Chen, Vincenzo Giannini, Michael M. Fogler, Yan Francescato, Chase T. Ellis, Joseph G. Tischler, Colin R. Woods, Alexander J. Giles, et al. "Sub-diffractional volume-confined polaritons in the natural hyperbolic material hexagonal boron nitride," Nature Communications, Vol. 5, No. 1, 5221, 2014.
doi:10.1038/ncomms6221 Google Scholar

6. Yuan, Zhu, Runkun Chen, Peining Li, Alexey Y. Nikitin, Rainer Hillenbrand, and Xinliang Zhang, "Extremely confined acoustic phonon polaritons in monolayer-hBN/metal heterostructures for strong light-matter interactions," ACS Photonics, Vol. 7, No. 9, 2610-2617, 2020.
doi:10.1021/acsphotonics.0c00981 Google Scholar

7. Lyu, Wei, Hanchao Teng, Chenchen Wu, Xiaotao Zhang, Xiangdong Guo, Xiaoxia Yang, and Qing Dai, "Anisotropic acoustic phonon polariton-enhanced infrared spectroscopy for single molecule detection," Nanoscale, Vol. 13, No. 29, 12720-12726, 2021.
doi:10.1039/d1nr01701b Google Scholar

8. Álvarez-Pérez, Gonzalo, Thomas G. Folland, Ion Errea, Javier Taboada-Gutiérrez, Jiahua Duan, Javier Martín-Sánchez, Ana I. F. Tresguerres-Mata, Joseph R. Matson, Andrei Bylinkin, Mingze He, Weiliang Ma, Qiaoliang Bao, José Ignacio Martín, Joshua D. Caldwell, Alexey Y. Nikitin, and Pablo Alonso-González, "Infrared permittivity of the biaxial van der Waals semiconductor α-MoO3 from near- and far-field correlative studies," Advanced Materials, Vol. 32, No. 29, 1908176, 2020.
doi:10.1002/adma.201908176 Google Scholar

9. Wu, Yingjie, Jiahua Duan, Weiliang Ma, Qingdong Ou, Peining Li, Pablo Alonso-González, Joshua D. Caldwell, and Qiaoliang Bao, "Manipulating polaritons at the extreme scale in van der Waals materials," Nature Reviews Physics, Vol. 4, No. 9, 578-594, 2022.
doi:10.1038/s42254-022-00472-0 Google Scholar

10. Li, Peining, Martin Lewin, Andrey V. Kretinin, Joshua D. Caldwell, Kostya S. Novoselov, Takashi Taniguchi, Kenji Watanabe, Fabian Gaussmann, and Thomas Taubner, "Hyperbolic phonon-polaritons in boron nitride for near-field optical imaging and focusing," Nature Communications, Vol. 6, No. 1, 7507, 2015.
doi:10.1038/ncomms8507 Google Scholar

11. Li, P., I. Dolado, F. J. Alfaro-Mozaz, A. Yu. Nikitin, F. Casanova, L. E. Hueso, S. Vélez, and R. Hillenbrand, "Optical nanoimaging of hyperbolic surface polaritons at the edges of van der Waals materials," Nano Letters, Vol. 17, No. 1, 228-235, 2017.
doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b03920 Google Scholar

12. Martín-Sánchez, J., J. Duan, J. Taboada-Gutiérrez, G. Álvarez-Pérez, K. V. Voronin, I. Prieto, W. Ma, Q. Bao, et al. "Focusing of in-plane hyperbolic polaritons in van der Waals crystals with tailored infrared nanoantennas," Science Advances, Vol. 7, No. 41, eabj0127, 2021.
doi:10.1126/sciadv.abj0127 Google Scholar

13. Zheng, Zebo, Jingyao Jiang, Ningsheng Xu, Ximiao Wang, Wuchao Huang, Yanlin Ke, Shouren Zhang, Huanjun Chen, and Shaozhi Deng, "Controlling and focusing in-plane hyperbolic phonon polaritons in α-MoO3 with a curved plasmonic antenna," Advanced Materials, Vol. 34, No. 6, 2104164, 2022.
doi:10.1002/adma.202104164 Google Scholar

14. He, Mingze, Ganjigunte R. S. Iyer, Shaurya Aarav, Sai S. Sunku, Alexander J. Giles, Thomas G. Folland, Nicholas Sharac, Xiaohang Sun, Joseph Matson, Song Liu, James H. Edgar, Jason W. Fleischer, D. N. Basov, and Joshua D. Caldwell, "Ultrahigh-resolution, label-free hyperlens imaging in the mid-IR," Nano Letters, Vol. 21, No. 19, 7921-7928, 2021.
doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c01808 Google Scholar

15. Folland, T. G., A. Fali, S. T. White, J. R. Matson, S. Liu, N. A. Aghamiri, J. H. Edgar, R. F. Haglund Jr., Y. Abate, and J. D. Caldwell, "Reconfigurable infrared hyperbolic metasurfaces using phase change materials," Nature Communications, Vol. 9, No. 1, 4371, 2018.
doi:10.1038/s41467-018-06858-y Google Scholar

16. Chaudhary, Kundan, Michele Tamagnone, Xinghui Yin, Christina M. Spägele, Stefano L. Oscurato, Jiahan Li, Christoph Persch, Ruoping Li, Noah A. Rubin, Luis A. Jauregui, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Philip Kim, Matthias Wuttig, James H. Edgar, Antonio Ambrosio, and Federico Capasso, "Polariton nanophotonics using phase-change materials," Nature Communications, Vol. 10, No. 1, 4487, 2019.
doi:10.1038/s41467-019-12439-4 Google Scholar

17. Zheng, Zebo, Ningsheng Xu, Stefano L. Oscurato, Michele Tamagnone, Fengsheng Sun, Yinzhu Jiang, Yanlin Ke, Jianing Chen, Wuchao Huang, William L. Wilson, et al. "A mid-infrared biaxial hyperbolic van der Waals crystal," Science Advances, Vol. 5, No. 5, eaav8690, 2019.
doi:10.1126/sciadv.aav8690 Google Scholar

18. Ni, G. X., H. Wang, B.-Y. Jiang, L. X. Chen, Y. Du, Z. Y. Sun, M. D. Goldflam, A. J. Frenzel, X. M. Xie, M. M. Fogler, and D. N. Basov, "Soliton superlattices in twisted hexagonal boron nitride," Nature Communications, Vol. 10, No. 1, 4360, 2019.
doi:10.1038/s41467-019-12327-x Google Scholar

19. Hu, Guangwei, Qingdong Ou, Guangyuan Si, Yingjie Wu, Jing Wu, Zhigao Dai, Alex Krasnok, Yarden Mazor, Qing Zhang, Qiaoliang Bao, Cheng-Wei Qiu, and Andrea Alù, "Topological polaritons and photonic magic angles in twisted α-MoO3 bilayers," Nature, Vol. 582, No. 7811, 209-213, 2020.
doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2359-9 Google Scholar

20. Chen, Mingyuan, Xiao Lin, Thao H. Dinh, Zhiren Zheng, Jialiang Shen, Qiong Ma, Hongsheng Chen, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, and Siyuan Dai, "Configurable phonon polaritons in twisted α-MoO3," Nature Materials, Vol. 19, No. 12, 1307-1311, 2020.
doi:10.1038/s41563-020-0732-6 Google Scholar

21. Duan, Jiahua, Nathaniel Capote-Robayna, Javier Taboada-Gutiérrez, Gonzalo Álvarez-Pérez, Iván Prieto, Javier Martín-Sánchez, Alexey Y. Nikitin, and Pablo Alonso-González, "Twisted nano-optics: Manipulating light at the nanoscale with twisted phonon polaritonic slabs," Nano Letters, Vol. 20, No. 7, 5323-5329, 2020.
doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c01673 Google Scholar

22. Zheng, Zebo, Fengsheng Sun, Wuchao Huang, Jingyao Jiang, Runze Zhan, Yanlin Ke, Huanjun Chen, and Shaozhi Deng, "Phonon polaritons in twisted double-layers of hyperbolic van der Waals crystals," Nano Letters, Vol. 20, No. 7, 5301-5308, 2020.
doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c01627 Google Scholar

23. Duan, J., G. Álvarez-Pérez, C. Lanza, K. Voronin, A. I. F. Tresguerres-Mata, N. Capote-Robayna, J. Álvarez-Cuervo, A. Tarazaga Martín-Luengo, J. Martín-Sánchez, V. S. Volkov, A. Y. Nikitin, and P. Alonso-González, "Multiple and spectrally robust photonic magic angles in reconfigurable α-MoO3 trilayers," Nature Materials, Vol. 22, No. 7, 867-872, 2023.
doi:10.1038/s41563-023-01582-5 Google Scholar

24. Alfaro-Mozaz, F. J., P. Alonso-González, S. Vélez, I. Dolado, M. Autore, S. Mastel, F. Casanova, L. E. Hueso, P. Li, A. Y. Nikitin, and R. Hillenbrand, "Nanoimaging of resonating hyperbolic polaritons in linear boron nitride antennas," Nature Communications, Vol. 8, No. 1, 15624, 2017.
doi:10.1038/ncomms15624 Google Scholar

25. Barcelos, Ingrid D., Thalita A. Canassa, Rafael A. Mayer, Flavio H. Feres, Eynara G. de Oliveira, Alem-Mar B. Goncalves, Hans A. Bechtel, Raul O. Freitas, Francisco C. B. Maia, and Diego C. B. Alves, "Ultrabroadband nanocavity of hyperbolic phonon–polaritons in 1D-like α-MoO3," ACS Photonics, Vol. 8, No. 10, 3017-3026, 2021.
doi:10.1021/acsphotonics.1c00955 Google Scholar

26. Kim, Sejeong, Johannes E. Fröch, Joe Christian, Marcus Straw, James Bishop, Daniel Totonjian, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Milos Toth, and Igor Aharonovich, "Photonic crystal cavities from hexagonal boron nitride," Nature Communications, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2623, 2018.
doi:10.1038/s41467-018-05117-4 Google Scholar

27. Calandrini, Eugenio, Kirill Voronin, Osman Balci, Maria Barra-Burillo, Andrei Bylinkin, Sachin M. Shinde, Subash Sharma, Fèlix Casanova, Luis E. Hueso, Andrei Chuvilin, Clifford McAleese, Ben R. Conran, Xiaochen Wang, Kenneth Teo, Valentyn S. Volkov, Andrea C. Ferrari, Alexey Y. Nikitin, and Rainer Hillenbrand, "Near-and far-field observation of phonon polaritons in wafer-scale multilayer hexagonal boron nitride prepared by chemical vapor deposition," Advanced Materials, Vol. 35, No. 44, 2302045, 2023.
doi:10.1002/adma.202302045 Google Scholar

28. Dai, Siyuan, Mykhailo Tymchenko, Yafang Yang, Qiong Ma, Marta Pita-Vidal, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, Michael M. Fogler, Andrea Alù, and Dimitri N. Basov, "Manipulation and steering of hyperbolic surface polaritons in hexagonal boron nitride," Advanced Materials, Vol. 30, No. 16, 1706358, 2018.
doi:10.1002/adma.201706358 Google Scholar

29. Fei, Z., A. S. Rodin, G. O. Andreev, W. Bao, A. S. McLeod, M. Wagner, L. M. Zhang, Z. Zhao, M. Thiemens, G. Dominguez, M. M. Fogler, A. H. Castro Neto, C. N. Lau, F. Keilmann, and D. N. Basov, "Gate-tuning of graphene plasmons revealed by infrared nano-imaging," Nature, Vol. 487, No. 7405, 82-85, 2012.
doi:10.1038/nature11253 Google Scholar

30. Chen, Jianing, Michela Badioli, Pablo Alonso-González, Sukosin Thongrattanasiri, Florian Huth, Johann Osmond, Marko Spasenović, Alba Centeno, Amaia Pesquera, Philippe Godignon, Amaia Zurutuza Elorza, Nicolas Camara, F. Javier García de Abajo, Rainer Hillenbrand, and Frank H. L. Koppens, "Optical nano-imaging of gate-tunable graphene plasmons," Nature, Vol. 487, No. 7405, 77-81, 2012.
doi:10.1038/nature11254 Google Scholar

31. Ma, Weiliang, Guangwei Hu, Debo Hu, Runkun Chen, Tian Sun, Xinliang Zhang, Qing Dai, Ying Zeng, Andrea Alù, Cheng-Wei Qiu, and Peining Li, "Ghost hyperbolic surface polaritons in bulk anisotropic crystals," Nature, Vol. 596, No. 7872, 362-366, 2021.
doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03755-1 Google Scholar

32. Narimanov, Evgenii E., "Dyakonov waves in biaxial anisotropic crystals," Physical Review A, Vol. 98, No. 1, 013818, 2018.
doi:10.1103/physreva.98.013818 Google Scholar

33. Narimanov, Evgenii E., "Ghost resonance in anisotropic materials: Negative refractive index and evanescent field enhancement in lossless media," Advanced Photonics, Vol. 1, No. 4, 046003, 2019.
doi:10.1117/1.ap.1.4.046003 Google Scholar

34. Wu, Kedi, Philippe Coquet, Qi Jie Wang, and Patrice Genevet, "Modelling of free-form conformal metasurfaces," Nature Communications, Vol. 9, No. 1, 3494, 2018.
doi:10.1038/s41467-018-05579-6 Google Scholar

35. Lebbe, N., S. Lanteri, S. Y. Golla, and P. Genevet, "Susceptibility synthesis of arbitrary shaped metasurfaces," Physical Review B, Vol. 106, No. 3, 035110, 2022.
doi:10.1103/physrevb.106.035110 Google Scholar

36. Leonhardt, Ulf, "Optical conformal mapping," Science, Vol. 312, No. 5781, 1777-1780, 2006.
doi:10.1126/science.1126493 Google Scholar

37. Pendry, John B., David Schurig, and David R. Smith, "Controlling electromagnetic fields," Science, Vol. 312, No. 5781, 1780-1782, 2006.
doi:10.1126/science.1125907 Google Scholar

38. Chen, Huanyang, C. T. Chan, and Ping Sheng, "Transformation optics and metamaterials," Nature Materials, Vol. 9, No. 5, 387-396, 2010.
doi:10.1038/nmat2743 Google Scholar

39. Schurig, David, Jack J. Mock, B. J. Justice, Steven A. Cummer, John B. Pendry, Anthony F. Starr, and David R. Smith, "Metamaterial electromagnetic cloak at microwave frequencies," Science, Vol. 314, No. 5801, 977-980, 2006.
doi:10.1126/science.1133628 Google Scholar

40. Chen, Huanyang and C. T. Chan, "Transformation media that rotate electromagnetic fields," Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 90, No. 24, 241105, 2007.
doi:10.1063/1.2748302 Google Scholar

41. Chen, Huanyang, Bo Hou, Shuyu Chen, Xianyu Ao, Weijia Wen, and C. T. Chan, "Design and experimental realization of a broadband transformation media field rotator at microwave frequencies," Physical Review Letters, Vol. 102, No. 18, 183903, 2009.
doi:10.1103/physrevlett.102.183903 Google Scholar

42. Sadeghi, M. M., Sucheng Li, Lin Xu, Bo Hou, and Huanyang Chen, "Transformation optics with Fabry-Pérot resonances," Scientific Reports, Vol. 5, No. 1, 8680, 2015.
doi:10.1038/srep08680 Google Scholar

43. Xu, Yadong, Shengwang Du, Lei Gao, and Huanyang Chen, "Overlapped illusion optics: A perfect lens brings a brighter feature," New Journal of Physics, Vol. 13, No. 2, 023010, 2011.
doi:10.1088/1367-2630/13/2/023010 Google Scholar

44. Jiang, Wei Xiang, Cheng-Wei Qiu, Tiancheng Han, Shuang Zhang, and Tie Jun Cui, "Creation of ghost illusions using wave dynamics in metamaterials," Advanced Functional Materials, Vol. 23, No. 32, 4028-4034, 2013.
doi:10.1002/adfm.201203806 Google Scholar

45. Lai, Yun, Jack Ng, Huanyang Chen, Dezhuan Han, Junjun Xiao, Zhao-Qing Zhang, and C. T. Chan, "Illusion optics: The optical transformation of an object into another object," Physical Review Letters, Vol. 102, No. 25, 253902, 2009.
doi:10.1103/physrevlett.102.253902 Google Scholar

46. Li, Chao, Xiankun Meng, Xiao Liu, Fang Li, Guangyou Fang, Huanyang Chen, and C. T. Chan, "Experimental realization of a circuit-based broadband illusion-optics analogue," Physical Review Letters, Vol. 105, No. 23, 233906, 2010.
doi:10.1103/physrevlett.105.233906 Google Scholar

47. Gabrielli, Lucas H., David Liu, Steven G. Johnson, and Michal Lipson, "On-chip transformation optics for multimode waveguide bends," Nature Communications, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1217, 2012.
doi:10.1038/ncomms2232 Google Scholar

48. Badri, S. Hadi, H. Rasooli Saghai, and Hadi Soofi, "Polygonal Maxwell's fisheye lens via transformation optics as multimode waveguide crossing," Journal of Optics, Vol. 21, No. 6, 065102, 2019.
doi:10.1088/2040-8986/ab1dba Google Scholar

49. Chen, Huanyang and C. T. Chan, "Electromagnetic wave manipulation by layered systems using the transformation media concept," Physical Review B, Vol. 78, No. 5, 054204, 2008.
doi:10.1103/physrevb.78.054204 Google Scholar

50. Passler, Nikolai C., Xiang Ni, Guangwei Hu, Joseph R. Matson, Giulia Carini, Martin Wolf, Mathias Schubert, Andrea Alù, Joshua D. Caldwell, Thomas G. Folland, and Alexander Paarmann, "Hyperbolic shear polaritons in low-symmetry crystals," Nature, Vol. 602, No. 7898, 595-600, 2022.
doi:10.1038/s41586-021-04328-y Google Scholar

51. Yoda, Taiki, Yuto Moritake, Kenta Takata, Kazuki Yokomizo, Shuichi Murakami, and Masaya Notomi, "Optical non-Hermitian skin effect in uniform media," Physical Review Research, Vol. 7, No. 3, 033214, 2025.
doi:10.1103/3tlp-16mc Google Scholar

52. Malitson, I. H., "Interspecimen comparison of the refractive index of fused silica," Journal of the Optical Society of America, Vol. 55, No. 10, 1205-1209, 1965.
doi:10.1364/josa.55.001205 Google Scholar

Dr. Shanshan Jie

Dr. Wen Xiao

Prof. Huanyang Chen