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Ultra-broadband asymmetric transmission and linear polarization conversion based on terahertz metamaterials

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Abstract

In this paper, a terahertz (THz) metamaterial (MM) is designed to achieve ultra-broadband, highly efficient polarization conversion and asymmetric transmission (AT) for linearly polarized (LP) wave. The MM structure is composed of two orthogonal metallic sub-wavelength grating layers and a sandwiched cross-shaped array layer, in which the orthogonal grating layers are used as polarization filters to enhance AT parameters and the cross-shaped structure functions as the polarization converter. Owing to the coupling between two different cut-wires (CWs) and the excitation of higher-order plasmon mode in the cross-shaped structure, the polarization conversion bandwidth is greatly expanded. Results show that the polarization conversion rate (PCR) of the proposed MM structure can exceed 0.99 from 0.41 to 2.38 THz. The AT parameters are above 0.64 in the range of 0.50–2.41 THz with a relative bandwidth of 131.27%, and the near-perfect AT effect with AT parameter in excess of 0.8 occurs at two bands, from 0.53 to 1.48 THz and from 1.80 to 2.06 THz, with the relative bandwidth of 94.53% and 13.47%, respectively. Comparisons of our results with other published works prove that our proposed MM can provide relatively wider bandwidth and higher AT parameter. Due to the excellent performance, the proposed MM has potential applications in designing THz diodes.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, nos. 92150101, 61735010)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physics Department of Science College, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China

    Yihao Zhang, Weimeng Luan, Xiaona Yan, Xinzhuo Gao, Xiaodong Zeng & Guohong Ma

  2. Terahertz Technology Innovation Research Institute, and Shanghai Key Lab of Modern Optical System, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, No. 516 Jun Gong Road, Shanghai, China

    Zuanming Jin

  3. School of Precision Instruments and Opto-Electronics Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China

    Jianquan Yao

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  1. Yihao Zhang
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. CST calculations and data collection and analysis were done by YZ, WL, XG, XY, XZ, GM; manuscript paper was written by YZ, and revised by ZJ and JY. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xiaona Yan.

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Zhang, Y., Luan, W., Yan, X. et al. Ultra-broadband asymmetric transmission and linear polarization conversion based on terahertz metamaterials. Appl. Phys. B 128, 156 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-022-07871-2

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