Chiral mirrors
Chiral mirrors
Mirrors are used in telescopes, microscopes, photo cameras, lasers, satellite dishes, and everywhere else, where redirection of electromagnetic radiation is required making them arguably the most important optical component. While conventional isotropic mirrors will reflect linear polarizations without change, the handedness of circularly polarized waves is reversed upon reflection. Here, we demonstrate a type of mirror reflecting one circular polarization without changing its handedness, while absorbing the other. The polarization-preserving mirror consists of a planar metasurface with a subwavelength pattern that cannot be superimposed with its mirror image without being lifted out of its plane, and a conventional mirror spaced by a fraction of the wavelength from the metasurface. Such mirrors enable circularly polarized lasers and Fabry-Pérot cavities with enhanced tunability, gyroscopic applications, polarization-sensitive detectors of electromagnetic waves, and can be used to enhance spectroscopies of chiral media
Plum, Eric
50761a26-2982-40df-9153-7aecc4226eb5
Zheludev, N.I.
32fb6af7-97e4-4d11-bca6-805745e40cc6
1 June 2015
Plum, Eric
50761a26-2982-40df-9153-7aecc4226eb5
Zheludev, N.I.
32fb6af7-97e4-4d11-bca6-805745e40cc6
Plum, Eric and Zheludev, N.I.
(2015)
Chiral mirrors.
Applied Physics Letters, 106 (22), [221901].
(doi:10.1063/1.4921969).
Abstract
Mirrors are used in telescopes, microscopes, photo cameras, lasers, satellite dishes, and everywhere else, where redirection of electromagnetic radiation is required making them arguably the most important optical component. While conventional isotropic mirrors will reflect linear polarizations without change, the handedness of circularly polarized waves is reversed upon reflection. Here, we demonstrate a type of mirror reflecting one circular polarization without changing its handedness, while absorbing the other. The polarization-preserving mirror consists of a planar metasurface with a subwavelength pattern that cannot be superimposed with its mirror image without being lifted out of its plane, and a conventional mirror spaced by a fraction of the wavelength from the metasurface. Such mirrors enable circularly polarized lasers and Fabry-Pérot cavities with enhanced tunability, gyroscopic applications, polarization-sensitive detectors of electromagnetic waves, and can be used to enhance spectroscopies of chiral media
Text
plum 2015
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 21 May 2015
Published date: 1 June 2015
Organisations:
Optoelectronics Research Centre
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 377672
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/377672
ISSN: 0003-6951
PURE UUID: 2433396a-6393-40b6-b65a-f624e7e808fd
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Date deposited: 22 Jun 2015 10:35
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:32
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