In a recent review article published in Photonics Research, researchers summarize advances in “twisted light” and “twisted matter,” and how structured light can probe, control, and help fabricate chiral systems. The review spans applications in areas including pharmaceuticals and catalysis, as well as photonics and materials processing.
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Background
Optical studies of chirality have traditionally relied on polarization-based effects such as circular dichroism and optical rotation. While widely used, these methods can be limited by weak light–matter interactions and the common use of plane-wave excitation.
The review describes how structured light, particularly optical vortex beams that carry orbital angular momentum (OAM), adds new ways to generate and control optical and material asymmetries.
Studies Highlighted in this Review
The review focuses on two main uses of wavefront chirality: enhancing chiroptical spectroscopy and inducing chiral structure formation in matter.
In chiroptical spectroscopy, structured light can strengthen chiral signals and enable probing mechanisms that do not depend on polarization helicity alone. The review describes studies in which vortex beams interact with chiral materials in ways that lead to effects such as OAM dichroism in nanoantennas and chiral metasurfaces. It also covers work on nonlinear helical dichroism in chiral and achiral molecules, and intrinsic dichroism in solids.
Other examples include terahertz vortex beams used to probe magnetic excitations, and magnetic helicoidal dichroism observed using extreme ultraviolet light vortices. Together, these approaches can provide access to transitions that are difficult (or effectively inaccessible) under conventional plane-wave excitation, which can reveal additional structural information.
In materials science, the review highlights the use of twisted beams to generate chiral structures directly. In these experiments, structured light transfers aspects of its wavefront twist to matter, supporting the formation of chiral micro- and nanostructures (“twisted matter”). Examples cited include helical microneedles and spiral surface reliefs produced in metal films, monocrystalline silicon, and azopolymer materials.
The review also discusses optical vortex pulses used to control the handedness of twisted metal nanostructures, and to form chiral silicon microprotrusions with tailored chirality. In azopolymer films, vortex-beam illumination can drive spiral mass transport and produce conch- or galaxy-like surface relief patterns, consistent with spin–orbit coupling effects in the light–matter interaction. More recently, structured light has also been applied in multiphoton lithography to fabricate 3D chiral microstructures (for example, helical microfibers), including approaches that use single-exposure interfered femtosecond vortex beams.
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Discussion
The review argues that structured light and wavefront chirality address several longstanding theoretical and experimental constraints in light–matter interactions. In spectroscopy, the reported benefits include stronger signals, additional contrast mechanisms beyond polarization helicity, and access to otherwise “forbidden” transitions. The review notes that generating optical vortices at the nanoscale, an enabling step for some device applications, remains an active area of development.
For fabrication, twisted beams are presented as a comparatively simple route to making chiral nano- and microstructures, in some cases under ambient conditions and without complex setups. The review links these structures to possible applications such as molecular chiral sensing, optoelectronic components, and waveguides for vortex-beam multiplexing. It also points to demonstrations in areas including conductivity control in graphene, modulation of enantiomeric excess during crystallization, structured light emission, and optical encryption.
Conclusion
The review concludes that vortex beams and wavefront chirality broaden how chirality can be measured and engineered with light. Rather than displacing polarization-based methods, structured light is positioned as a complementary approach that adds new degrees of freedom for both sensing and fabrication. The authors highlight continued progress in beam shaping, spectroscopy, and light–matter interaction theory as key to further adoption across photonics and materials science.
Journal Reference
Forbes K. A. (2026). Twisted light and twisted matter: the photonic frontier of chirality. Photonics Research Review 14(1): 193-208. DOI: 10.1364/PRJ.574843, https://opg.optica.org/prj/fulltext.cfm?uri=prj-14-1-B193