Abstract

Circularly polarized light (CPL) sources are important for a variety of applications, such as circular dichroism spectroscopy, spin state control in quantum information technology and ultrafast magnetization control. Metallic artificial structures, which are called “Metamaterials”, are promising candidates to develop novel devices with a lot of flexibility in their design for CPL control. The symmetry of a material plays a crucial role in polarization sensitive optical phenomena; therefore it is necessary to employ metamaterials with appropriate symmetries to achieve circular polarization control. We have studied the effect of circular polarization in planar chiral metamaterials for controlling linear circular polarization effect, and triangle-arrayed metamaterials for controlling nonlinear circular polarization effect. In this presentation, we show the recent progress of our research related to these topics.

© 2015 Japan Society of Applied Physics, Optical Society of America