Edbert J Sie, Mohamed A K Othman, Clara M Nyby, Das Pemmaraju, Christina A C Garcia, Yaxian Wang, Burak Guzelturk, Chenyi Xia, Jun Xiao, Andrey Poletayev, Benjamin K Ofori-Okai, Matthias C Hoffmann, Suji Park, Xiaozhe Shen, Jie Yang, Renkai Li, Alexander H Reid, Stephen Weathersby, Philipp Muscher, Nathan Finney, Daniel Rhodes, Luis Balicas, Emilio Nanni, James Hone, William Chueh, Thomas P Devereaux, Prineha Narang, Tony F Heinz, Xijie Wang, Aaron M Lindenberg
Manipulating the polarization of light at the nanoscale is key to the development of next-generation optoelectronic devices. This is typically done via waveplates using optically anisotropic crystals, with thicknesses on the order of the wavelength. Here, using a novel ultrafast electron-beam-based technique sensitive to transient near fields at THz frequencies, we observe a giant anisotropy in the linear optical response in the semimetal WTe2 and demonstrate that one can tune the THz polarization using a 50 nm thick film, acting as a broadband wave plate with thickness 3 orders of magnitude smaller than the wavelength...
May 8, 2024: Nano Letters