TY - JOUR
T1 - Broadband transparent chiral mirrors
T2 - Design methodology and bandwidth analysis
AU - Mai, Wending
AU - Zhu, Danny
AU - Gong, Zheng
AU - Lin, Xiaoyou
AU - Chen, Yifan
AU - Hu, Jun
AU - Werner, Douglas H.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Dr. Lei Kang from the Pennsylvania State University for fruitful discussions and suggestions in the early stages of this work. We acknowledge support in part by the Penn State MRSEC, Center for Nanoscale Science (NSF DMR-1420620), the National Excellent Youth Fund by NSFC (61425010), the Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of NSFC (61721001), the Changjiang Scholar Program, the 111 Project of Chinese Ministry of Education (B07046), and the Sichuan Science and Technology Program (2018GZ0251).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Author(s).
PY - 2019/4/1
Y1 - 2019/4/1
N2 - Chiral mirrors are a class of metamaterials that reflect circularly polarized light of a certain helicity in a handedness-preserving manner, while absorbing circular polarization of the opposite handedness. However, most absorbing chiral mirrors operate only in a narrow frequency band, as limited by the causality principle. Instead of absorbing the undesired waveform, here we propose a transparent chiral mirror that allows undesired waves to pass through. In particular, the handedness-preserving band of the transparent chiral mirror is free of the causality limit, thus enabling broadband functionality. Furthermore, since electromagnetic waves outside the handedness-preserving band may transmit through the proposed chiral mirror, the reflected wave contains only circular polarization components of a certain handedness over a wide frequency range, which is favored in many applications. Moreover, the scheme is lossless and scalable. To realize the proposed transparent chiral mirror, we apply an array of helical microstructures in a two-dimensional square lattice. Traditionally, this kind of structure has been used as a circular polarizer but we apply it instead in a reflective mode. Our work provides a bandwidth analysis of chiral mirrors, and paves the way to new opportunities for creating broadband chiral metamaterials with handedness-preserving properties.
AB - Chiral mirrors are a class of metamaterials that reflect circularly polarized light of a certain helicity in a handedness-preserving manner, while absorbing circular polarization of the opposite handedness. However, most absorbing chiral mirrors operate only in a narrow frequency band, as limited by the causality principle. Instead of absorbing the undesired waveform, here we propose a transparent chiral mirror that allows undesired waves to pass through. In particular, the handedness-preserving band of the transparent chiral mirror is free of the causality limit, thus enabling broadband functionality. Furthermore, since electromagnetic waves outside the handedness-preserving band may transmit through the proposed chiral mirror, the reflected wave contains only circular polarization components of a certain handedness over a wide frequency range, which is favored in many applications. Moreover, the scheme is lossless and scalable. To realize the proposed transparent chiral mirror, we apply an array of helical microstructures in a two-dimensional square lattice. Traditionally, this kind of structure has been used as a circular polarizer but we apply it instead in a reflective mode. Our work provides a bandwidth analysis of chiral mirrors, and paves the way to new opportunities for creating broadband chiral metamaterials with handedness-preserving properties.
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U2 - 10.1063/1.5025560
DO - 10.1063/1.5025560
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85063890519
SN - 2158-3226
VL - 9
JO - AIP Advances
JF - AIP Advances
IS - 4
M1 - 045305
ER -