Enhanced plasmonic Brewster transmission through metascreens by tapered slits

The recently introduced plasmonic Brewster transmission through free-standing perforated metallic screens (metascreens), which offers ultrabroadband total light transmission has been demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally. This anomalous phenomenon is attributed to impedance matching between the guided modes supported by ultranarrow straight slits and transverse-magnetic impinging waves at a specific oblique incidence. However, this impedance matching mechanism is significantly influenced by the presence of realistic substrates leading to reduce the plasmonic Brewster transmission. To circumvent this substrate influence, the author proposes to carve periodically tapered slits on metascreens to enable the impedance matching at the input and output surface and thus enhance transmission at the Brewster angle. This finding is applied to realize ultrathin perfect absorbers with a broad bandwidth of operation. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.