Symmetry principles and theorems are of crucial importance in optics. Indeed, from one side they allow to get direct insights into phenomena by eliminating unphysical interpretations; from the other side, they guide the designer of photonic components by narrowing down the parameter space of design variables. In this Letter we illustrate a significant departure from the Babinet spectral complementarity in a very common and technologically relevant situation: that of a patterned conducting screen placed on a subwavelength dielectric slab. The symmetry property predicted by Babinet theorem is correctly recovered for pairs of geometrically complementary - but less realistic in terms of applications - free-standing patterned screens. Our analysis merges experimental data with fully vectorial electromagnetic modeling, and provides also an alternative form of Babinet theorem that highlights a connection with the concept of electromagnetic duality.
The electromagnetic properties of an extremely thin metallic checkerboard drastically change from resonant reflection (transmission) to resonant transmission (reflection) when the local electrical conductivity at the interconnection points of the checkerboard is switched. To date, such critical transitions of metasurfaces have been applied only when they have 4-fold rotational symmetry, and their application to polarization control, which requires anisotropy, has been unexplored. To overcome this applicability limitation and open up new pathways for dynamic deep-subwavelength polarization cont…
We computationally study a subwavelength dielectric grating structure, show that slab waveguide modes can be used to obtain broadband high reflectivity, and analyze how slab waveguide modes influence reflection. A structure showing interference between Fabry-Perot modes, slab waveguide modes, and waveguide array modes is designed with ultra-broadband high reflectivity. Owing to the coupling of guided modes, the region with reflectivity R > 0.99 has an ultra-high bandwidth ( Δf/f > 30%). The incident-angle region with R > 0.99 extends over a range greater than 40°. Moreover, an asymmetric waveg…
We consider propagation of transverse magnetic electromagnetic waves through a nonlinear metamaterial slab, of subwavelength thickness and very small average dielectric permittivity, made up of alternating metal and dielectric nonlinear layers. Exploiting the effective-medium approach, we prove that the output field intensity is a multi-valued function of both the input field intensity and incidence angle so that the transmissivity exhibits a novel kind of multi-stability and a pronounced two-parameter hysteresis behavior. The predicted two-parameter hysteresis physically stems from the fact t…
We theoretically predict efficient optical second-harmonic generation (SHG) from a few hundred nanometer thick slab consisting of a quadratic nonlinear anisotropic medium whose linear principal permittivities are, at the fundamental wavelength, very small and have different signs (indefinite medium). We show that, by illuminating the slab with a p-polarized fundamental wave (with intensity of a few MW/cm^2), a highly efficient scattering of the second-harmonic field occurs when the conditions of linear complete slab transparency for the fundamental wave are met. The high efficiency of the SHG …
In this paper we study the characteristics of subwavelength imaging of a photonic crystal (PhC) superlens under the influence of source displacement. For square- and triangular-lattice photonic crystal lenses, we investigate the influence of changing the lateral position of a single point source on the imaging uniformity and stability. We also study the effect of changing the geometrical center of a pair of sources on the resolution of the double-image. Both properties are found to be sensitive to the displacement, which implies that a PhC slab cannot be treated seriously as a flat lens. We al…
We give a solution to the fundamental problem of restoring optical resonances in deep subwavelength structures by resorting to indefinite metamaterials. We prove that a nanometric thick hyperbolic slab with very small permittivities exhibits etalon resonances and provides high-contrast optical angular filtering. This is possible since the hyperbolic dispersion allows the vacuum radiation to couple with medium plane waves with longitudinal wavenumbers large enough to yield optical standing waves within the nanometric slab thickness. Our findings can form the basis of a novel way for shrinking o…
We show that the finite-difference frequency-domain method is well-suited to study subwavelength lensing effects in left-handed materials (LHM's) and related problems. The method is efficient and works in the frequency domain, eliminating the need for specifying dispersion models for the permeability and permittivity as required by the popular finite-difference time-domain method. We show that "superlensing" in a LHM slab with refractive index n = -1 can be approached by introducing an arbitrarily small loss term. We also study a thin silver slab, which can exhibit subwavelength imaging in the…
We examine the possibility of using negative refraction stemming from the phonon response in an anisotropic crystal to create a simple slab lens with plane parallel sides, and show that imaging from such a lens should be possible at room temperature despite the effects of absorption that are inevitably present due to phonon damping. In particular, we consider the case of crystal quartz, a system for which experimental measurements consistent with all-angle negative refraction have already been demonstrated. Furthermore, we investigate the possibility of subwavelength imaging from such material…
We study the eigenmodes of a slab of a wire metamaterial and demonstrate that such a waveguiding structure supports deep-subwavelength propagating modes exhibiting properties of a single-mode waveguide at any fixed frequency below the plasma frequency of metal wires. We compare our analytical results with the dispersion relations extracted from the experimental measurements.
We investigate in this paper the imaging properties of an absorptive left-handed material (LHM) slab. For a line source, a geometric explanation to the reason of the thickness limitation on an ideal slab is given. For a lossy slab, the imaging properties are determined by the wavelength, the slab thickness, the distance from the source to the nearer boundary of the slab, and the absorption effect. Varying the ratios between these quantities, the image width can be changed from wavelength to subwavelength scale. In the former situation, the energy density is mainly concentrated at the two image…
Recently it has been proposed that a planar slab of material, for which both the permittivity and permeability have the values of -1, could bring not only the propagating fields associated with a source to a focus, but could also refocus the nonpropagating near-fields, thereby achieving a subdiffraction image. In this work we discuss the sensitivity of the subwavelength focus to various slab parameters, pointing out the connection to slab plasmon modes. We also note and resolve a paradox associated with the perfect imaging of a point source. We conclude that subwavelength resolution is achieva…
Light transmission through bilayered thin metal films perforated with subwavelength hole arrays are numerically studied based on a full-vector finite-difference time-domain approach. A variety of transmission peaks originating from different physical mechanisms are observed. In addition to the direct tunnelling and Fabry-Pèrot resonances, generally possessed by idealized bilayered dielectric slabs, the near-field localized plasmon polaritons also play important roles. They not only influence the direct tunnelling in a destructive or constructive way, the interactions between these localized pl…
Photonic components based on structured metallic elements show great potential for device applications where field enhancement and confinement of the radiation on a subwavelength scale is required. In this paper we report a detailed study of a prototypical metallo-dielectric photonic structure, where features well known in the world of dielectric photonic crystals, like band gaps and defect modes, are exported to the metallic counterpart, with interesting applications to infrared science and technology, as for instance in quantum well infrared photodetectors, narrow-band spectral filters, and …
This paper proposes a novel, rigorous and simple Fourier-transformation approach to study resonances in a perfectly conducting slab with finite number of subwavelength slits of width $h\ll 1$. Since regions outside the slits are variable separated, by Fourier transforming the governing equation, we could express field in the outer regions in terms of field derivatives on the aperture. Next, in each slit where variable separation is still available, wave field could be expressed as a Fourier series in terms of a countable basis functions with unknown Fourier coefficients. Finally, by matching f…
We consider the problem of subwavelength imaging via a slab of a left handed media (LHM) in the presence of material losses. We derive the expression for the resolution limit of LHM-based lens and demonstrate that the area of its subwavelength performance is usually limited to the near-field zone.
We show that a very simple structure consisting of a single subwavelength dielectric ridge on the surface of a slab waveguide enables spatial differentiation and integration of the profile of optical beams propagating in the waveguide. The differentiation and integration operations are performed in transmission and in reflection, respectively, at oblique incidence of the beam impinging on the ridge. The implementation of these operations is associated with the resonant excitation of a cross-polarized eigenmode of the ridge. At the considered parameters of the structure and incidence geometry, …
We present a method to map the absolute electromagnetic field strength inside photonic crystals. We apply the method to map the electric field component Ez of a two-dimensional photonic crystal slab at microwave frequencies. The slab is placed between two mirrors to select Bloch standing waves and a subwavelength spherical scatterer is scanned inside the resulting resonator. The resonant Bloch frequencies shift depending on the electric field at the position of the scatterer. To map the electric field component Ez we measure the frequency shift in the reflection and transmission spectrum of th…
We show that a nonlinear metallo-dielectric layered slab of subwavelength thickness and very small average dielectric permittivity displays optical multistable behavior at arbitrary low optical intensities. This is due to the fact that, in the presence of the small linear permittivity, one of the multiple electromagnetic slab states exists no matter how small is the transmitted optical intensity. We prove that multiple states at ultra-low optical intensities can be reached only by simultaneously operating on the incident optical intensity and incidence angle. By performing full wave simulation…
We present the experimental observation of the superlensing effect in a slab of a one-dimensional photonic crystal made of tilted dielectric elements. We show that this flat lens can achieve subwavelength resolution in different frequency bands. We also demonstrate that the introduction of a proper corrugation on the lens surface can dramatically improve both the transmission and the resolution of the imaged signal.
In terahertz (THz) photonics, there is an ongoing effort to develop thin, compact devices such as dielectric photonic crystal (PhC) slabs with desirable light matter interactions. However, previous works in THz PhC slabs are limited to rigid substrates with thicknesses $\sim$ 100s of micrometers. Dielectric PhC slabs have been shown to possess in-plane modes that are excited by external radiation to produce sharp guided mode resonances with minimal absorption for applications in sensors, optics and lasers. Here, we confirm the existence of guided resonances in a membrane-type THz PhC slab with…
This work presents a mathematical theory for electromagnetic scattering resonances in a subwavelength annular hole embedded in a metallic slab, with the annulus width $h\ll1$. The model is representative among many 3D subwavelength hole structures, which are able to induce resonant scattering of electromagnetic wave and the so-called extraordinary optical transmission. We develop a multiscale framework for the underlying scattering problem based upon a combination of the integral equation in the exterior domain and the waveguide mode expansion inside the tiny hole. The matching of the electrom…
