Manipulating wave polarization by twisted plasmonic metamaterials

A simple bilayered chiral metamaterial is constructed by using an array of two twisted split ring resonators (SRRs). Theoretical analysis and simulated results show that chiral metamaterial can achieve strong optical activity of linearly polarized electromagnetic (EM) waves. The arbitrary polarization rotation angle can be readily realized by properly designing the twisted angle. Changing the length of the horizontal bar can tune the spectral response of the SRRs. The induced current densities and magnetic field distributions provide a good explanation to optical activity in the bilayered SRR metamaterial. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America