Experimental evidence of cut-wire-induced enhanced transmission of transverse-electric fields through sub-wavelength slits in a thin metallic screen

TL;DR

This paper provides the first experimental evidence that placing cut-wire arrays near subwavelength slits in a metallic screen significantly enhances the transmission of transverse-electric fields, confirming numerical predictions.

Contribution

It presents the first experimental validation of cut-wire-induced enhanced transmission of TE fields through subwavelength slits, demonstrating robustness against fabrication imperfections.

Findings

Experimental results match numerical predictions

Enhanced transmission is robust to fabrication tolerances

First experimental demonstration of the phenomenon

Abstract

Recent numerical studies have demonstrated the possibility of achieving substantial enhancements in the transmission of transverse-electric-polarized electromagnetic fields through subwavelength slits in a thin metallic screen by placing single or paired metallic cut-wire arrays at a close distance from the screen. In this Letter, we report on the first experimental evidence of such extraordinary transmission phenomena, via microwave (X/Ku-band) measurements on printed-circuit-board prototypes. Experimental results agree very well with full-wave numerical predictions, and indicate an intrinsic robustness of the enhanced transmission phenomena with respect to fabrication tolerances and experimental imperfections.