Asymmetric transmission of linearly polarized light at optical metamaterials

Phys Rev Lett. 2010 Jun 25;104(25):253902. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.253902. Epub 2010 Jun 22.

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate a three-dimensional chiral optical metamaterial that exhibits an asymmetric transmission for forwardly and backwardly propagating linearly polarized light. The observation of this novel effect requires a metamaterial composed of three-dimensional chiral meta-atoms without any rotational symmetry. Our analysis is supported by a systematic investigation of the transmission matrices for arbitrarily complex, generally lossy media that allows deriving a simple criterion for asymmetric transmission in an arbitrary polarization base. Contrary to physical intuition, in general the polarization eigenstates in such three-dimensional and low-symmetry metamaterials do not obey fixed relations and the associated transmission matrices cannot be symmetrized.