A study of chirality in gold nanostructures with second harmonic generation

We present the second harmonic generation - circular dichroism response from G-shaped gold nanostructures for P-polarized incoming light. By eliminating the contributions of anisotropy to the signal, an absolute measure of the second harmonic generation - circular dichroism is presented. The system of planar nanostructures is an excellent model for studying the correlation between optical properties and chiral morphology at the nanoscale. Samples with both enantiomorphs of the chiral pattern were prepared and, demonstrating the unambiguous presence of chirality, the second harmonic generation - circular dichroism response from two such samples was fitted simultaneously with a single set of fitting parameters.