Complementary Y-shaped chiral metamaterial with giant optical activity and circular dichroism simultaneously for terahertz waves

Abstract

A complementary Y-shaped chiral metamaterial (CYCMM) is proposed for the realization of giant optical activity and circular polarization with strong circular dichroism (CD) simultaneously for terahertz (THz) waves. It is demonstrated that the proposed CYCMM can achieve 90° linear polarization rotation around 2.13 THz and a giant CD effect at 2.38 THz through full-wave simulations. The mechanism of the giant CD effect and optical activity is illustrated by simulated surface current distribution. Due to strong optical activity and the CD effect, the proposed CYCMM is useful for the development of integrated terahertz spectroscopic and imaging devices.

Keywords:

• Circular dichroism
• optical activity
• complementary Y-shaped structure
• chiral metamaterial

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number U1435209].