Polarization is one of the basic properties of electromagnetic waves conveying valuable information in signal transmission and sensitive measurements. Conventional methods for advanced polarization control impose demanding requirements on material properties and attain only limited performance. We demonstrated ultrathin, broadband, and highly efficient metamaterial-based terahertz polarization converters that are capable of rotating a linear polarization state into its orthogonal one. On the basis of these results, we created metamaterial structures capable of realizing near-perfect anomalous refraction. Our work opens new opportunities for creating high-performance photonic devices and enables emergent metamaterial functionalities for applications in the technologically difficult terahertz-frequency regime.

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We demonstrated giant optical activity using a chiral metamaterial composed of an array of conjugated bi-layer metal structure. The chiral metamaterials were further integrated with photoactive inclusions to accomplish a wide tuning range of the optical activity through illumination with near-infrared light. The strong chirality observed in our metamaterials results in a negative refractive index, which can also be well controlled by the near-infrared optical excitation.