Enhanced intrinsic chiroptical response of resonant metallic metasurfaces

Abstract

The physics of resonant metasurfaces underpins many electromagnetic functionalities with enhanced performance by virtue of resonant excitations. Resonances originating from bound states in the continuum (BICs) were recently recognized in photonics for their superior optical properties, strong local field enhancement, and suppression of radiative losses. Very recently, a concept of intrinsically chiral dielectric BIC metasurfaces was proposed that combines strong narrowband resonant features with the polarization control of scattered light. Here, we design a resonant chiral metallic metasurface supporting a BIC resonance in the microwave wavelength range. In our structure, the metasurface units (meta-atoms) are characterized with rotational and mirror spatial symmetries. We numerically characterize metasurface mode properties in eigenmode calculations and scattering spectra for linearly polarized excitation under oblique incidence. Then, we investigate intrinsic chiroptical effects for transmission of normally propagating excitation beams by breaking the meta-atom in-plane mirror symmetries. We predict that the intrinsic circular dichroism in such structures may exceed 0.74.