Direct observation of photonic spin Hall effect in Mie scattering
Abstract
The photonic spin Hall effect (PSHE), a hallmark of spin-orbit interaction of light, has long been considered a promising route toward spin-controlled functionalities in nanophotonics. Yet, its practical realization has been severely limited by the inherently weak spin-orbit coupling in typical systems, resulting in vanishingly small transverse shifts and extremely low scattering efficiency. This fundamental trade-off has rendered the PSHE observable only through complex weak measurement protocols and signal amplification-approaches that come at the cost of further intensity loss, particularly in nanoscale systems. In this work, we overcome this longstanding challenge by introducing a novel mechanism based on symmetry breaking and mode coupling in a standalone scatterer, which unlocks a regime of Friedrich-Wintgen superscattering with strong near-field spin-orbit interaction. This allows for simultaneous enhancement of both the photonic spin Hall shift and the far-field scattering intensity-boosting the latter by nearly two orders of magnitude compared to conventional dipolar particles. Through tailored multipolar interference, the PSHE is made accessible at experimentally convenient angles, enabling post selection-free detection. We report the first direct experimental observation of the PSHE from a single superscattering particle, achieved in the microwave regime via polarization-resolved far-field measurements. Our findings not only validate a new physical pathway for enhancing spin-dependent light-matter interactions, but also establish a robust, scalable platform for spin-based photonic technologies. This breakthrough opens new avenues in precision optical metrology, advanced imaging, LIDAR systems, and integrated photonic circuitry, bridging a critical gap between fundamental spin optics and real-world applications.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2507.03611,
title = {Direct observation of photonic spin Hall effect in Mie scattering},
author = {Aizaz Khan and Nikolay Solodovchenko and Dongliang Gao and Denis Kislov and Xiaoying Gu and Yuchen Sun and Lei Gao and Cheng-Wei Qiu and Alexey Arsenin and Alexey Bolshakov and Vjaceslavs Bobrovs and Olga Koval and Alexander S. Shalin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.03611},
year = {2025}
}
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30 pages