Polarization properties in helical metamaterials

• Published in: Frontiers of Optoelectronics (Online) 2012-09, Vol.5 (3), p.248-255
• Main Authors: YANG, Zhenyu, ZHANG, Peng, XIE, Peiyuan, WU, Lin, LU, Zeqin, ZHAO, Ming
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering; chiral media; Electrical Engineering; Engineering; finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method; helical metamaterials; Physics; polarization; Review Article; 信号噪声比; 偏振特性; 偏振状态; 光学性能; 时域有限差分; 材料; 椭圆形; 螺旋结构
• ISSN: 1674-4128; 2095-2759; 1674-4594; 2095-2767
• DOI: 10.1007/s12200-012-0267-9

In the last few years, there has been growing interest in the research of helical metamaterials due to the advantages of giant circular dichroism; broad operation bands, and compact structures. However, most of the researches were in the cases of single-, circular-helical metamaterials, and normal incidences. In this paper, we reviewed recent simulation works in the helical metama- terials with the finite-difference time-domain （FDTD） method, which mainly included the optical performances of double-, three-, four-helical metamaterials, perfor- mances of elliptical-helical metamaterials, and the polar- ization properties under the condition of oblique incidences. The results demonstrate that the double-helical metamaterials have operation bands more than 50%, which is broader than those of the single-helical structures. But both of them have low signal-to-noise ratios about 10 dB. The three- and four-helical metamaterials have significant improvement in overall performance. For elliptical- helixes, simulation results suggest that the transmitted light can have elliptical polarization states. On the condition of oblique incidences, the novel property of tunable polarization states occurred in the helical metama- terials, which could have much broader potential applica- tions such as tunable optical polarizers, tunable beam splitters, and tunable optical attenuators.