Anisotropic Babinet-invertible metasurfaces to realize transmission-reflection switching for orthogonal polarizations of light

TL;DR

This paper introduces anisotropic Babinet-invertible metasurfaces that enable dynamic polarization control by switching transmission and reflection for orthogonal light polarizations, demonstrated through a reconfigurable terahertz polarizer.

Contribution

It presents a universal class of anisotropic metasurfaces enabling polarization-specific transmission-reflection switching, expanding applications in dynamic polarization control.

Findings

Achieved polarization-dependent switching of transmission and reflection.

Demonstrated a reconfigurable terahertz polarizer with 90° rotation.

Validated the concept experimentally in the terahertz regime.

Abstract

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 control by utilizing critical transitions of checkerboard-like metasurfaces, we introduce a universal class of anisotropic Babinet-invertible metasurfaces enabling transmission-reflection switching for each orthogonally polarized wave. As an application of anisotropic Babinet-invertible metasurfaces, we experimentally realize a reconfigurable terahertz polarizer whose transmitting axis can be dynamically rotated by $90^\circ$.