Artificial dielectric isolator for THz radiation

Abstract

An isolator based on a waveguide-based artificial dielectric medium is scalable to a range of desired terahertz frequencies, has non-reciprocal transmission and provides low insertion loss and high isolation at various tunable terahertz frequencies, far exceeding the performance of other terahertz isolators, and rivaling that of commercial optical isolators based on the Faraday effect. Because terahertz artificial dielectrics are low loss, inexpensive, and easy to fabricate, this approach offers a promising new route for polarization control of free-space terahertz beams in various instrumentation applications. Artificial dielectrics are man-made media that mimic properties of naturally occurring dielectric media, or even manifest properties that cannot generally occur in nature. A simple and effective strategy implements a polarizing-beam-splitter and a quarter wave plate to form a highly effective isolator. Performance of the device is believed to exceed that of any other experimentally demonstrated method for isolation of back-reflections for terahertz beams.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.