Dresden 2011 – scientific programme

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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 76: Plasmonics and Nanooptics VII

O 76.2: Talk

Thursday, March 17, 2011, 15:15–15:30, WIL A317

Quantifying Chirality in 2D and 3D Metallic Metamaterials — •Martin Schäferling, Daniel Drégely, Thomas Weiss, and Harald Giessen — 4th Physics Institute and Research Center SCoPE, University of Stuttgart, Germany

Chirality on the nanoscale is an emerging field for metamaterials. Circular dichroism in metallic spirals can exceed the best liquid crystals or helical molecules by many orders of magnitude. Broadband quarter-wave plates can be assembled by 3D spirals that are fabricated by direct laser writing [1]. Bichiral metallic photonic crystals exhibit phases and optical properties that are unattainable in nature [2,3].

In this contribution, we investigate numerically various planar and three-dimensional metallic metamaterials with respect to their degrees of circular dichroism and optical chirality. The latter is a measure for the local chirality of electromagnetic fields [4]. Chiral metamaterials can lead to local superchiral fields, which exhibit extremely high optical chirality. We discuss the structural, spectral and spatial dependence of these values. This provides a comparison of the chiroptical properties of different practical geometries.

[1] J. K. Gansel et al., Science 325, 1513 (2009).

[2] M. Thiel et al., Adv. Mat. 21, 4680 (2009).

[3] A. Radke, P. V. Braun, and H. Giessen, to be published.

[4] Y. Tang and A. E. Cohen, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 163901 (2010).