Dog Bone Triplet Metamaterial Wave Plate

Abstract

Metamaterials are artificially made sub-wavelength structures arranged in periodic arrays. They can be designed to interact with electromagnetic radiation in many different and interesting ways such as allowing radiation to experience a negative refractive index (NRI). We have used this technique to design and build a quasi-optical Half Wave Plate (HWP) that exhibits a large birefringence by virtue of having a positive refractive index in one axis and a NRI in the other. Previous implementations of such NRI-HWP have been narrow band ($\sim$1-3%) due to the inherent reliance on needing a resonance to create the NRI region. We manufacture a W-band prototype of a novel HWP that uses the Pancharatnam method to extend the bandwidth (up to more than twice) of a usual NRI-HWP. Our simulated and experimentally obtained results despite their differences show that a broadening of a flat region of the phase difference is possible even with the initially steep gradient for a single plate.

5 pages, 5 figures. Conference paper. Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium 2012 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 27th-30th March 2012. The published version can be found via either http://piers.org/piersproceedings/piers2012KualalumpurProc.php?searchname=Dog+Bone+Triplet+Metamaterial+Wave+Plate or https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/uk-ac-man-scw:187815