Polarization dependent light propagation in WTe2 multilayer structure

Abstract

WTe 2 is one of the exciting and outstanding semimetallic members of TMDCs which has attracted immense attention for manipulating light propagation due to its inherent optical anisotropy and hyperbolic characteristic in the infrared frequency range. We investigate dependence of the reflectance and transmit-tance of a single layer and double layers of WTe2 thin film in terms of frequency and polarization angle of the incident wave. We find rich behaviors in the optical response of these structures due to their anisotropic permittivity tensors. Furthermore, we analyze the polarization rotation of transmitted and reflected waves through these structures. We demonstrate that these structures provide the ability to achieve desired polarization rotation for outgoing waves by tuning the frequency and polarization angle of the incident wave with respect to the principal axes of WTe2 thin film. In particular, we elucidate essential relevance of the optical response and polarization rotation of the double layer structure to the in-plain rotation angle of WTe2 thin films. We explain that this structure permits a comprehensive control of the polarization rotation of the outgoing waves by adjusting the angle between layers. The proposed structure can be employed as an efficient light manipulator with the aim of application in communication, imaging, and information processing.