Yushin Kim

A terahertz metamaterial with unnaturally high refractive index

Controlling the electromagnetic properties of materials, going beyond the limit that is attainable with naturally existing substances, has become a reality with the advent of metamaterials. The range of various structured artificial ‘atoms’ has promised a vast variety of otherwise unexpected physical phenomena, among which the experimental realization of a negative refractive index has been one of the main foci thus far. Expanding the refractive index into a high positive regime will complete the spectrum of achievable refractive index and provide more design flexibility for transformation optics. Naturally existing transparent materials possess small positive indices of refraction, except for a few semiconductors and insulators, such as lead sulphide or strontium titanate, that exhibit a rather high peak refractive index at mid- and far-infrared frequencies. Previous approaches using metamaterials were not successful in realizing broadband high refractive indices. A broadband high-refractive-index metamaterial structure was theoretically investigated only recently, but the proposed structure does not lend itself to easy implementation. Here we demonstrate that a broadband, extremely high index of refraction can be realized from large-area, free-standing, flexible terahertz metamaterials composed of strongly coupled unit cells. By drastically increasing the effective permittivity through strong capacitive coupling and decreasing the diamagnetic response with a thin metallic structure in the unit cell, a peak refractive index of 38.6 along with a low-frequency quasi-static value of over 20 were experimentally realized for a single-layer terahertz metamaterial, while maintaining low losses. As a natural extension of these single-layer metamaterials, we fabricated quasi-three-dimensional high-refractive-index metamaterials, and obtained a maximum bulk refractive index of 33.2 along with a value of around 8 at the quasi-static limit.

Reversibly Stretchable and Tunable Terahertz Metamaterials with Wrinkled Layouts

The use of wrinkling provides a generic route to stretchable metamaterials, with unprecedented terahertz tunability. The wrinkled metamaterial can be stretched reversibly up to 52.5%; the structural integrity can be maintained during at least 100 stretching/relaxing cycles. Importantly, the wrinkling of meta-atoms offers a deterministic way to achieve controlled broadening of electrical resonance.

Unidirectional Emission from Whispering Gallery Modes via Transformation Optics

It is well known from transformation optics that a light pathway can be designed with artificial materials. When a coordinate transform technique is applied to optically resonating dielectric structures, interesting phenomena can be observed as well. Generally, a long-lived whispering gallery mode (WGM) has no preferential direction of radiation because of its rotationally symmetric structure. However, if the space inside the resonator is transformed so that the discontinuity of coordinates exists, it becomes possible to reconcile directional emission with WGMs. Here, we transform only the inner space of a deformed optical cavity, e.g., the Limaçon cavity into a virtual perfect disk via a conformal mapping and show these two seemingly incompatible behaviors can be observed simultaneously. The refractive index profiles that realize the transformed space can be obtained from the conformal space transformation. The resonant mode calculated with a transformed boundary element method shows that the WGMs can restore for the deformed cavity. The Husimi function calculated for this transformed cavity shows a weighted band-like profile, which implies that the optical rays inside the cavity is maintaining its reflecting angle as is for the original cavity. However, the far-field pattern shows anisotropic emission of radiation because it is determined by tunneling through the rotationally asymmetric boundary. For example, the conformal WGMs in Limaçon and center-shifted triangular cavities exhibit bidirectional and uni-directional emission patterns in the far-field, respectively. These conformal WGM cavities with both the ultra-high quality factor and the directional light emission may be used in the realization of efficient directional light sources.

Effective Material Parameter Retrieval for Terahertz Metamaterials

Metamaterials, which are generally composed of subwavelength scale metallic structures, have been the subject of intensive research in recent years. Because their effective electromagnetic properties can be engineered by designing subwavelength scale metallic structures, called ‘meta-atoms’, these artificially constructed materials are expected to lead to many new developments in the field of photonics. Furthermore, the terahertz (THz) frequency range has many important applications such as security detection, sensing, and biomedical imaging. Because many natural materials are inherently unresponsive to THz radiation, the natural materials that can be applied in devices in order to manipulate THz waves are very limited. Accordingly, the development of metamaterials with unusual optical properties in the THz frequency range has generated intense interest among researchers. In this part, design methods for metamaterials in the terahertz frequencies are introduced. This method is based on the unit cell design and S-parameter retrieval technique. Following a brief introduction to the method, some examples of terahertz metamaterial design will be presented in the last section.