Chiral metamaterial and high-contrast grating based polarization selective devices

Abstract

The utilization of purposely designed artificial media with engineered electromagnetic responses enables the obtaining of intriguing features that are either impossible or difficult to realize using readily available natural materials. Here, we focus on two classes of artificial media: metamaterials and high-contrast gratings. Metamaterials and high-contrast gratings are designed within the subwavelength periodicity range and therefore, they are non-diffractive. We exploit the magnetoelectric coupling effect in chiral metamaterials to design several structures. Firstly, we design a linear to circular polarization convertor that operates for x-polarized normally incident plane waves. Then, we combine the chirality feature and the electromagnetic tunneling phenomenon to design a polarization insensitive 90◦ polarization rotator that exhibits unity transmission and crosspolarization conversion efficiencies. Subsequently, we combine this polarization rotator with a symmetric metallic grating with a subwavelength slit for the purpose of enabling the one-way excitation of spoof surface plasmons and achieving a reversible diodelike beaming regime. Then, we exploit the asymmetric transmission property of chiral metamaterials and show that a polarization angle dependent polarization rotation and a strongly asymmetric diodelike transmission is realizable. Afterwards, a brief waveguide theory is provided and eventually, the dispersion relations for a periodic dielectric waveguide geometry are derived. Then, using these relations and considering the finiteness of the waveguide length, we show the theoretical description of high-contrast gratings. Finally, we theoretically and experimentally show that the achievement of a broadband quarter-wave plate regime is possible by using carefully designed high-contrast gratings.