Chirality of Light in Hybrid Modes of Vacuum-clad Ultrathin Optical Fibers

We investigate chirality of light in the quasicircularly polarized fundamental HE11 mode and thequasicircularly polarized higher-order hybrid modes of vacuum-clad ultrathin optical fibers. Weshow that, for a given fiber with the parameters in the range of experimental interest, the higherorder modes have smaller optical chirality per unit energy than the fundamental mode. The sign ofthe chirality per unit energy of a HE or EH mode is the same as or opposite to, respectively, thesign of the phase circulation direction. Outside the fiber, the fields in the quasicircularly polarizedHE11 mode and the quasicircularly polarized higher-order HE21 and HE31 modes are superchiral