双螺旋结构超宽带圆偏振器.docVIP

  Ultra-broadband optical circular polarizers consisting of double-helical nanowire structures# YANG Zhenyu, ZHAO Ming* 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 (Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074) Abstract: Recently, it was demonstrated by J.K. Gansel et al. that three-dimensional single-helical metamaterials can serve as broadband circular polarizers in the infrared range. In this study, we proposed a new structured metamaterials with double-helical nanowires to construct circular polarizers with boarder wavelength bands in the visible light and near infrared regions. Using the finite difference time domain method, we confirmed that the circular polarizers with the double-helical structures have operation bands more than 50% broader than those of the single-helical structures. Key words: metamaterials; polarizer; nanophotonics 0 Introduction Circular polarization of light is attractive for applications in reflective color displays [1-3], microscopy in life science, and photography [4, 5]. Generally, there are two ways of obtaining circular polarized light: one is using a linear polarizer and a quarter-wave plate [6], which is the most common method in optical engineering; the other is utilizing cholesteric liquid crystals (CLC) [7-10], which are self-assembled photonic crystals formed by rod-like molecules. However, both approaches are restricted to narrow frequency ranges, which is a major limitation in many applications [11]. In the last few years, there has been growing interest in the study of the metamaterial due to the exciting potential applications ranging from perfect lenses [12], cloaking devices [13] to sub-wavelength optical waveguides [14], and the enhancement of magnetic resonance imaging [15]. Recently, Gansel et al. [11, 16] succeeded in developing broadband circular polarizers using metamaterials consisting of single-helical gold nanowires. The devices offer giant circular dichroism in a wave