Complete confinement and extraordinary propagation of Dyakonov-like polaritons in hBN.

• Found two highly confined Dyakonov-like polaritons. • Saw remarkable walk-off angle. • Dyakonov-like polaritons are very easily excited. • Energy-flux density of polariton is highly located at the surface. Two Dyakonov-like polaritons (DLPs) were found in the hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). DLP-I lies in the lower reststrahlen band (RB-I) where the hBN is a hyperbolic material, but DLP-II exists in a narrower frequency region where the hBN is an elliptical material, adjacent to the higher reststrahlen band (RB-II). After uniformly considering the DLP electromagnetic fields on the two sides of the hBN surface, we found that the two DLPs are highly confined in the hBN, and even are completely confined in a certain wave-vector. And also, the Poynting vector of either DLP in the hBN seriously deviates from its wave vector and the directional difference outside and inside the hBN dramatically changes with the distance from the surface. The above extraordinary results can support some potential applications in the mid-infrared range, such as high-efficient energy conduction, strictly manipulating infrared-ray direction and infrared-filtering as well as continuous light-splittingfrom micro-meter to nano-meter dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]