Asymmetric transmission of linearly polarized light at optical metamaterials
Abstract
We experimentally demonstrate a three-dimensional chiral optical metamaterial that exhibits an asymmetric transmission for forwardly and backwardly propagating linearly polarized light. The observation of this novel effect requires a metamaterial composed of three-dimensional chiral metaatoms without any rotational symmetry. Our analysis is supported by a systematic investigation of the transmission matrices for arbitrarily complex, lossy media that allows deriving a simple criterion for asymmetric transmission in an arbitrary polarization base. Contrary to physical intuition, in general the polarization eigenstates in such three-dimensional and low-symmetry metamaterials do not obey fxed relations and the associated transmission matrices cannot be symmetrized.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1005.1970,
title = {Asymmetric transmission of linearly polarized light at optical metamaterials},
author = {C. Menzel and C. Helgert and C. Rockstuhl and E. -B. Kley and A. Tünnermann and T. Pertsch and F. Lederer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1005.1970},
year = {2015}
}