Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 25, 2026

Demonstration of Equal-Intensity Beam Generation by Dielectric Metasurfaces
Published on: June 7, 2019
What makes single-helical metamaterials generate "pure" circularly polarized light?
Lin Wu1, ZhenYu Yang, Ming Zhao
1Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, College of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
Abstract:
Circular polarizers with left-handed helical metamaterials can transmit right-handed circularly polarized (RCP) light with few losses. But a certain amount of left-handed circularly polarized (LCP) light will occur in the transmitted light, which is the noise of the circular polarizer. Therefore, we defined the ratio of the RCP light intensity to the LCP light intensity as the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio. In our previous work, it's found that circular polarizers with multi-helical metamaterials have two orders higher S/N ratios than that of single-helical metamaterials. However, it has been a great challenge to fabricate such multi-helical structures with micron or sub-micron feature sizes. Is it possible for the single-helical metamaterials to obtain equally high S/N ratios as the multi-helical ones? To answer this question, we systematically investigated the influences of structure parameters of single-helical metamaterials on the S/N ratios using the finite-different time-domain (FDTD) method. It was found that the single-helical metamaterials can also reach about 30dB S/N ratios, which are equal to the multi-helical ones. Furthermore, we explained the phenomenon by the antenna theory and optimized the performances of the single-helical circular polarizers.
Related Concept Videos
Potential Due to a Polarized Object
Standing Electromagnetic Waves
Suppose a sheet of a perfect conductor is placed in the yz-plane, and a linearly polarized electromagnetic wave traveling in the...
Standing Waves in a Cavity
Dielectric Polarization in a Capacitor
Plane Electromagnetic Waves I
The EM field is assumed to be a...
Induced Electric Dipoles
Since the absolute value of potential energy holds no physical meaning, its zero value can be chosen as per...

