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Published on: August 18, 2017
Meta-Chirality: Fundamentals, Construction and Applications
Xiaoliang Ma1, Mingbo Pu2, Xiong Li3
1State Key Laboratory of Optical Technologies on Nano-Fabrication and Micro-Engineering, Institute of Optics and Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P. O. Box 350, Chengdu 610209, China. maxl@ioe.ac.cn.
Abstract:
Chiral metamaterials represent a special type of artificial structures that cannot be superposed to their mirror images. Due to the lack of mirror symmetry, cross-coupling between electric and magnetic fields exist in chiral mediums and present unique electromagnetic characters of circular dichroism and optical activity, which provide a new opportunity to tune polarization and realize negative refractive index. Chiral metamaterials have attracted great attentions in recent years and have given rise to a series of applications in polarization manipulation, imaging, chemical and biological detection, and nonlinear optics. Here we review the fundamental theory of chiral media and analyze the construction principles of some typical chiral metamaterials. Then, the progress in extrinsic chiral metamaterials, absorbing chiral metamaterials, and reconfigurable chiral metamaterials are summarized. In the last section, future trends in chiral metamaterials and application in nonlinear optics are introduced.
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