Low-loss Broadband Negative Refractive Index due to Nonresonant 2D Helical Chiral Metamaterial

TL;DR

This paper presents a 2D helical chiral metamaterial that achieves broadband negative refractive index with low loss and high figure of merit, enabling flexible polarization control without angle sensitivity.

Contribution

The work introduces a nonresonant, broadband negative index metamaterial with high figure of merit and low loss, advancing optical activity applications.

Findings

Achieves broadband negative refractive index with high figure of merit (>90)

Extremely low loss (<2% per layer)

Insensitivity to incident wave angles

Abstract

We demonstrated a 2D helical chiral metamaterial that exhibits broadband strong optical activity resulting nonresonant Drude-like response. The strong chirality leads to broadband negative refractive index with high figure of merit (>90) and extremely low loss (<2% per layer). The optical activity are insensitive to the angles of incident electromagnetic waves, thereby enabling more flexibility in polarization manipulation applicaitons.