Optical bistability involving planar metamaterial with broken structural symmetry

We report on a bistable light transmission through a planar metamaterial composed of a metal pattern of weakly asymmetric elements placed on a nonlinear substrate. Such structure bears the Fano-like sharp resonance response of a trapped-mode excitation. The feedback required for bistability is provided by the coupling between the strong antiphased trapped-mode-resonance currents excited on the metal elements and the intensity of inner field in the nonlinear substrate.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Enhancement of absorption bistability by trapping light planar metamaterial

We propose to achieve a strong bistable response of a thin layer of a saturable absorption medium by involving a planar metamaterial specially designed to bear a high-Q trapped-mode resonance in the infrared region.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

Asymmetric transmission of light through a planar chiral metamaterial

We report that normal incidence transmission of circularly polarized light through lossy anisotropic planar chiral meta-material is asymmetric for opposite directions. The new effect is fundamentally distinct from conventional gyrotropy of bulk chiral media and the Faraday Effect

Metamaterial with polarization and direction insensitive resonant transmission response mimicking electromagnetically induced transparency

We report on a planar metamaterial, the resonant transmission frequency of which does not depend on the polarization and angle of incidence of electromagnetic waves. The resonance results from the excitation of high-Q antisymmetric trapped current mode and shows sharp phase dispersion characteristic to Fano-type resonances of the electromagnetically induced transparency phenomenon

Cooperative resonance linewidth narrowing in a planar metamaterial

We theoretically analyze the experimental observations of a spectral line collapse in a metamaterial array of asymmetric split ring resonators [Fedotov et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 223901 (2010)]. We show that the ensemble of closely-spaced resonators exhibits cooperative response, explaining the observed system-size dependent narrowing of the transmission resonance linewidth. We further show that this cooperative narrowing depends sensitively on the lattice spacing and that significantly stronger narrowing could be achieved in media with suppressed ohmic losses.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, to appear in New Journal of Physic

Polarization effects in the diffraction of light by a planar chiral structure

We analyze polarization changes of light diffracted on a planar chiral array from the standpoint of the Lorentz reciprocity lemma and find biorthogonality in the polarization eigenstates for waves diffracting though the grating in the opposite direction. Both reciprocal and nonreciprocal components in the polarization azimuth rotation of the diffracted light are identified. The structural chirality of the array arrangement and the chirality of individual elements of the array give rise to polarization effects

Wave reflection by a periodic layered metamaterial

A technique incorporating the reflection matrix of a semi-infinite discrete layered periodic structure is employed to analyze the electromagnetic properties of a half-space filled with a layered metamaterial