Geometrical chirality is a universal property encountered on very different length scales ranging from geometrical shapes of living organisms to drug and DNA molecules. The interaction of chiral matter with chiral light, that is, an electromagnetic field possessing a certain handedness, underlies our ability to discriminate enantiomers of chiral molecules. In this context, it is often desired to have an optical cavity that efficiently couples to only a specific (right or left) molecular enantiomer and does not couple to the opposite one. Here, we demonstrate a single-handedness chiral optical cavity supporting only an eigenmode of a given handedness and lacking modes having the opposite one. Resonant excitation of the cavity with light of appropriate handedness enables the formation of a chiral standing wave with a uniform chirality density, while the light of opposite handedness does not cause any resonant effects. Furthermore, only chiral emitters of the matching handedness efficiently interact with such a chiral eigenmode, enabling the handedness-selective strength of light–matter coupling. The proposed system expands the set of tools available for investigations of chiral matter and opens the door to studies of a chiral electromagnetic vacuum.

中文翻译：

---

单手性手性光学腔

几何手性是在从生物体的几何形状到药物和 DNA 分子的非常不同的长度尺度上遇到的普遍属性。手性物质与手性光的相互作用，即具有一定旋向性的电磁场，是我们区分手性分子对映异构体的能力的基础。在这种情况下，通常希望有一个光学腔，它只有效地耦合到特定的（右或左）分子对映异构体，而不耦合到相反的对映异构体。在这里，我们展示了一个单手性手性光学腔，它仅支持给定手性的本征模式，并且缺乏具有相反模式的模式。具有适当旋向性的光对腔的共振激发能够形成具有均匀手性密度的手性驻波，而相反手性的光不会引起任何共振效应。此外，只有匹配手性的手性发射器才能有效地与这种手性本征模式相互作用，从而实现光-物质耦合的手性选择性强度。所提出的系统扩展了可用于研究手性物质的工具集，并为研究手性电磁真空打开了大门。