Chiral metamaterial composed of three-dimensional plasmonic nanostructures

Nano Lett. 2011 Oct 12;11(10):4400-4. doi: 10.1021/nl202565e. Epub 2011 Sep 7.

Abstract

We introduce a top-down fabricated metamaterial composed of three-dimensional, chiral, plasmonic nanostructures for visible and near-infrared wavelengths. Based on a combined spectroscopic and interferometric characterization, the entire complex transmission response in terms of a Jones matrix is disclosed. Particularly, the polarization output state of light after propagation through the nanostructures can be decoded from the measurements for any excitation configuration. We experimentally found a rotation of the polarization azimuth of linearly polarized light exceeding 50° at wavelengths around 1.08 μm. This corresponds to a specific rotation which is significantly larger than that of any linear, passive, and reciprocal medium reported to date.