Manipulating polarization of light with ultrathin epsilon-near-zero metamaterials

One of the basic functionalities of photonic devices is the ability to manipulate the polarization state of light. Polarization components are usually implemented using the retardation effect in natural birefringent crystals and, thus, have a bulky design. Here, we have demonstrated the polarization manipulation of light by employing a thin subwavelength slab of metamaterial with an extremely anisotropic effective permittivity tensor. Polarization properties of light incident on the metamaterial in the regime of hyperbolic, epsilon-near-zero, and conventional elliptic dispersions were compared. We have shown that both reflection from and transmission through./20 thick slab of the metamaterial may provide nearly complete linear-to-circular polarization conversion or 90 linear polarization rotation, not achievable with natural materials. Using ellipsometric measurements, we experimentally studied the polarization conversion properties of the metamaterial slab made of the plasmonic nanorod arrays in different dispersion regimes. We have also suggested all-optical ultrafast control of reflected or transmitted light polarization by employing metal nonlinearities. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America