Research Article

Theoretical study on dynamical planar-chirality switching in checkerboard-like metasurfaces

¹ Department of Electronic Science and Engineering, Kyoto University, Kyoto 615-8510, Japan
² Center for Energy and Environmental Science, Shinshu University, 4-17-1 Wakasato, Nagano 380-8553, Japan

^* e-mail: urade@giga.kuee.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Received: 10 September 2016
Accepted: 15 November 2016
Published online: 13 January 2017

Abstract

In this paper, we show that the handedness of a planar chiral checkerboard-like metasurface can be dynamically switched by modulating the local sheet impedance of the metasurface structure. We propose a metasurface design to realize the handedness switching and theoretically analyze its electromagnetic characteristic based on Babinet’s principle. Numerical simulations of the proposed metasurface are performed to validate the theoretical analysis. It is demonstrated that the polarity of asymmetric transmission for circularly polarized waves, which is determined by the planar chirality of the metasurface, is inverted by switching the sheet impedance at the interconnection points of the checkerboard-like structure. The physical origin of the asymmetric transmission is also discussed in terms of the surface current and charge distributions on the metasurface.