Abstract
Thick metals are nearly opaque due to high reflectance and the huge third-order nonlinear susceptibility of metals is hardly utilized. In the present paper, zero-reflection phenomena in a thick metal (M) slab covered with one-dimensional dielectric photonic crystals (PC’s) (CD) n are studied in heterostructures M(DC) n and sandwiched structures (CD) n M(DC) n . Visible-light tunneling modes can be realized in M(DC) n or (CD) n M(DC) n in which the optical epsilon-negative medium (metal) is paired with the PC, which mimics a lossless optical mu-negative medium in the gap region. The transmittance as high as 33% and 38% are observed at wavelength of 589 nm for M = Ag, with thickness d=60.2 nm in a heterostructure and d=83.1 nm in a sandwiched structure, respectively. The transmittance is more than 200 times larger than that of a single Ag layer with the same thickness in the latter case. Possible applications on metal-based nonlinearity enhancement and optical absorber are also discussed.
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Du, G., Jiang, H., Wang, Z. et al. Zero-reflection metal slabs: A mechanism of light tunneling in metamaterials. Appl. Phys. A 103, 567–570 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-010-6187-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-010-6187-x