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Metaphotonics is a rapidly emerging new direction that deals with manipulation of electric and magnetic fields and their coupling in (thin)nanoengineered materials to control the field distribution and propagation of electromagnetic waves1,2 Chiral photonics expands the scope of Metaphotonics and offers chiral control of both linear and nonlinear optical functions for applications ranging from optical switching, to negative- and near-zero refractive index metamaterials, to chiral bioimaging. However, realization of such applications requires materials with optical chirality at visible wavelengths that is orders of magnitude larger than that of any naturally-occurring materials. Our theory-guided-design and synthesis of novel chiral polymers with very large optical rotation will be presented along with our recent reports of plasmonic, excitonic and structural enhancement of linear and nonlinear optical activity. Some results on nanocomposite exhibiting large magneto-optic effect will also be presented, which may enable mapping of ultra-weak magnetic fields, like those generated by brain function. We are pursuing multiscale modeling and experimental design on interaction of structured light endowed with both spin and orbital angular momentum, with structured chiral plasmonic media for adaptive control of effective dielectric function which reveals that the incident light can be controlled dynamically, i.e. in terms of amplitude, wavelength, and total angular momentum, j (polarization and wavefront) to enable adaptive control of epsilon-near-zero behavior.
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