One-way reciprocal spoof surface plasmons and relevant reversible diodelike beaming

Abstract

One-way excitation of spoof surface plasmons (SPs) and strongly pronounced diodelike extraordinary transmission of linearly polarized waves in the beaming regime can be obtained by combining spoof SPs and cross-polarization conversion resonances. The reciprocal composite structure that is suggested to realize this mechanism consists of a symmetric metallic grating with a subwavelength slit and a metamaterial based ultrathin 90${}^{\ensuremath{\circ}}$ polarization rotator and, therefore, shows the broken spatial inversion symmetry. In contrast to the earlier studies of SP inspired transmission through subwavelength slits, asymmetric (one-way) beaming is demonstrated at normal incidence and for both $s$- and $p$-polarized incident waves. Furthermore, as an implication of Lorentz reciprocity, the studied diodelike mechanism is reversible, which manifests itself in that transmission is significant for one of the two opposite illumination directions at $s$ polarization and for the other direction at $p$ polarization. The obtained numerical and experimental results verify the general idea and enable us to select the optimal operation regimes.