Chiral light-matter interactions in hot vapor-cladded waveguides

Recently, there has been growing interest in integrating alkali vapors with nanoscale photonic structures, such as nanowaveguides, resonators, and nanoantennas. Nanoscale confinement of electromagnetic fields may introduce a longitudinal electric field component, giving rise to circularly polarized modes that are essential for diverse applications involving vapor and light, such as chirality and nonreciprocity. Hereby, we have designed, fabricated, and characterized a miniaturized vapor cell that is integrated with optical wave-guides that are designed to generate a peculiar circular-like polarization. Taking advantage of this phenomenon, we demonstrate a spectral shift in the atomic absorption signatures at varying magnetic fields, and significant isolation between forward- and backward-propagating waves in our atomic dadded waveguide. Our results pave the way for the utilization of chip-scale integrated atomic devices in applications such as optical isolation and high spatial resolution magne-tometry. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement