Elliptical dichroism: operating principle of planar chiral metamaterials

Abstract

We employ a homogenization technique based on the Lorentz electronic theory to show that planar chiral structures (PCSs) can be described by an effective dielectric tensor similar to that of biaxial elliptically dichroic crystals. Such a crystal is shown to behave like a PCS insofar as it exhibits its characteristic optical properties, namely, co-rotating elliptical polarization eigenstates and asymmetric, direction-dependent transmission for left/right-handed incident wave polarization.

3 pages, version as accepted in Optics Letters but before final shortenings

References in corpus (4)

• 3D-Chiral Metamaterial Showing Artificial Magnetic Response and Negative Refraction
• Optical Activity of Planar Achiral Metamaterials
• Planar metamaterial with transmission and reflection that depend on the direction of incidence
• Spectral and polarization effects in deterministically nonperiodic multilayers containing optically anisotropic and gyrotropic materials