In this Letter, we show that the electromagnetic duality symmetry, broken in the microscopic Maxwell's equations by the presence of charges, can be restored for the macroscopic Maxwell's equations. The restoration of this symmetry is shown to be independent of the geometry of the problem. These results provide a tool for the study of light-matter interactions within the framework of symmetries and conservation laws. We illustrate its use by determining the helicity content of the natural modes of structures possessing spatial inversion symmetries and by elucidating the root causes for some surprising effects in the scattering off magnetic spheres.

Rationally designed artificial materials, called metamaterials, allow for tailoring effective material properties beyond (“meta”) the properties of their bulk ingredient materials. This statement is especially true for chiral metamaterials, as unlocking certain degrees of freedom necessarily requires broken centrosymmetry. While the field of chiral electromagnetic/optical metamaterials has become rather mature, the field of elastic/mechanical metamaterials is just emerging and wide open. This research news reviews recent theoretical and experimental progress concerning 3D chiral mechanical and optical metamaterials, with special emphasis on work performed at KIT.

Here we present a roadmap on Photonic metasurfaces. This document consists of a number of perspective articles on different applications, challenge areas or technologies underlying photonic metasurfaces. Each perspective will introduce the topic, present a state of the art as well as give an insight into the future direction of the subfield.

The multipolar decomposition of electromagnetic sources is an important tool for the study of light–matter interactions in general, and optical materials in particular. Here, a report is given on recent progress in the multipolar decomposition of electromagnetic sources. First, the exact and simple expressions for the multipolar moments of electric current density distributions are reviewed, and then, the results are extended to multipolar moments of magnetization current density distributions due to intrinsic spin. The consideration of both electric and magnetic sources allows to establish the conditions for sources of pure handedness. Scripts are provided that facilitate the computation of multipolar moments of arbitrary order. The work and the included examples of use are placed in the context of nanophotonics and metamaterials, and an outlook for applications in these and other fields is provided.

We propose a theoretical and practical framework for the study of light-matter interactions and the angular momentum of light. Our proposal is based on helicity, total angular momentum, and the use of symmetries. We compare the framework to the current treatment, which is based on separately considering spin angular momentum and orbital angular momentum and using the transfer between the two in physical explanations. In our proposal, the fundamental problem of spin and orbital angular momentum separability is avoided, predictions are made based on the symmetries of the systems, and the practical application of the concepts is straightforward. Finally, the framework is used to show that the concept of spin to orbit transfer applied to focusing and scattering is masking two completely different physical phenomena related to the breaking of different fundamental symmetries: transverse translational symmetry in focusing and electromagnetic duality symmetry in scattering.