Surface Ferron Excitations in Ferroelectrics and Their Directional Routing

The duality between electric and magnetic dipoles inspires recent comparisons between ferronics and magnonics. Here we predict surface polarization waves or “ferrons” in ferroelectric insulators, taking the long-range dipolar interaction into account. We predict properties that are strikingly different from the magnetic counterpart, i.e. the surface Damon–Eshbach magnons in ferromagnets. The dipolar interaction pushes the ferron branch with locked circular polarization and momentum to the ionic plasma frequency. The low-frequency modes are on the other hand in-plane polarized normal to their wave vectors. The strong anisotropy of the lower branch renders directional emissions of electric polarization and chiral near fields when activated by a focused laser beam, allowing optical routing in ferroelectric devices.