Title: Chirality of light and its interaction with chiral matter
Description: This thesis conducts a systematic study on the chirality of light and its interaction with chiral matter. In the theory section, we introduce a measure of local density of chirality, applying to arbitrary electromagnetic fields. This optical chirality suggests the existence of superchiral modes, which are more selective than circularly polarized light (CPL) in preferentially exciting single enantiomers in certain regions of space. Experimentally, we demonstrate an 11-fold enhancement over CPL in discriminating chiral fluorophores of single handedness in a precisely sculpted superchiral field. This result agrees to within 15% with theoretical predictions.