如何提高单螺旋超材料圆偏振器的信噪比？.docVIP

  How to improve the S/N ratio of the circular polarizer with single-helical metamaterials?# YANG Zhenyu, ZHAO Ming* 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 (Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, WuHan 430074) Abstract: Circular polarizers with multi-helical metamaterials have two orders higher signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios than that of single-helical metamaterials. However, it has been a great challenge to fabricate such multi-helical structures with micron or sub-micron feature sizes. Is it possible for the single-helical metamaterials to obtain equally high S/N ratios as the multi-helical ones? To answer this question, we systematically investigated the influences of structural parameters of single-helical metamaterials on the S/N ratios using the finite-different time-domain (FDTD) method. It was found that the single-helical metamaterials can also reach about 30dB S/N ratios, which are equal to the multi-helical ones. Furthermore, we explained the phenomenon by the antenna theory and optimized the performances of the single-helical circular polarizers. Keywords: metamaterials; polarizer; nanophotonics 0 Introduction In the last few years, there has been growing interest in the study of the chiral metamaterials both theoretically and experimentally due to the exciting potential applications such as giant optical activity [1–2], negative index of refraction [3–5] and circular dichroism [6–8]. In the recent past, Gansel [9–10] succeeded in developing a circular polarizer using gold single-helical metamaterials. Compared with other familiar methods, this polarizer has advantages of broad wavelength ranges and compact structures which are convenient to be integrated with other optical devices. However, the single-helixes, mentioned in the Gansel’s reports, have a rather low signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios (~10 dB), which will restrict the potential applications of the devices. Recently, we proposed a new type of circular polari