Local Optical Activity in Achiral Two-Dimensional Gold Nanostructures

Since Pasteur's discovery of molecular chirality, which means that the molecule has a nonsuperposable mirror image, the geometrical chirality of a material has been considered the prerequisite for exhibiting circular dichroism (CD, defined as the differential absorption of left and right circularly polarized light) of the structural origin. Here, we report an experimental demonstration of nanoscale local CD activities for achiral (nonchiral) rectangular gold nanostructures. Macroscopic CD spectral measurements of the nanostructure sample did not show any CD activity over the entire range of measured wavelengths, as expected from the achiral shape of the rectangle. In contrast, we found both locally positive and negative CD signals in a single rectangular nanostructure, whose distribution was symmetric about the center of the rectangle, with large CD signals at the corners. The results demonstrate that the established selection rule of optical activity is not valid for local microscopic measurements.