Switchable quarter-wave plate with graphene based metamaterial for broadband terahertz wave manipulation

Graphene is a good candidate material in designing tunable terahertz devices due to its tunability of sheet conductivity. In this paper, we propose a scheme to design switchable quarter-wave plate for terahertz wave that is composed of graphene based grating and metallic grating structures. The proposed active device can dynamically switch the transmission wave among left-handed, right-handed circular polarization and linear polarization states by electrically controlling the Fermi energy of the graphene grating. The device is analyzed with grating circular polarizer theory and its performance is investigated through full wave simulations on practically realizable geometry. The proposed quarter-wave plate having a subwavelength thickness demonstrates a wide angle of incidence tolerance, and a broad bandwidth operation. This device concept offers a further step in developing tunable polarizers and polarization switchers, which may be applied in practical terahertz image and communication systems. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America