Wandering principal optical axes in van der Waals triclinic materials

Nature is abundant in material platforms with anisotropic permittivities arising from symmetry reduction that feature a variety of extraordinary optical effects. Principal optical axes are essential characteristics for these effects that define light-matter interaction. Their orientation – an orthogonal Cartesian basis that diagonalizes the permittivity tensor, is often assumed stationary. Here, we show that the low-symmetry triclinic crystalline structure of van der Waals rhenium disulfide and rhenium diselenide is characterized by wandering principal optical axes in the space-wavelength domain with above π/2 degree of rotation for in-plane components. In turn, this leads to wavelength-switchable propagation directions of their waveguide modes. The physical origin of wandering principal optical axes is explained using a multi-exciton phenomenological model and ab initio calculations. We envision that the wandering principal optical axes of the investigated low-symmetry triclinic van der Waals crystals offer a platform for unexplored anisotropic phenomena and nanophotonic applications.