Coherent control of birefringence and optical activity

We show that polarization effects due to anisotropy and chirality affecting a wave propagating through a thin slab of material can be controlled by another electromagnetic wave. No nonlinearity of the metamaterial slab is required and the control can be exercised at arbitrarily low intensities. In p...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Mousavi, Seyedmohammad A., Plum, Eric, Shi, Jinhui, Zheludev, Nikolay I.
Other Authors: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/87629
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/46790
Description
Summary:We show that polarization effects due to anisotropy and chirality affecting a wave propagating through a thin slab of material can be controlled by another electromagnetic wave. No nonlinearity of the metamaterial slab is required and the control can be exercised at arbitrarily low intensities. In proof-of-principle experiments with anisotropic and chiral microwave metamaterials, we show that manifestations of linear and circular birefringence and dichroism can be modulated by the control wave from their maximum value to zero.