Nonreciprocal Negative Refraction Enabled by Photonic Time Crystals.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41577643.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5c06214 and PMC identifier 12879925.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
We propose and theoretically demonstrate nonreciprocal negative refraction enabled by time-varying photonic structures. By engineering temporal modulations at the interfaces of hyperbolic media, we achieve isolation between forward and backward beams while preserving the hallmark property of negative refraction. Two complementary approaches are developed: in the optical regime, a multilayer AZO/ZnO hyperbolic slab is sandwiched between permittivity-modulated dielectric layers (3D time crystals); in the microwave regime, a wire medium is sandwiched between time-modulated resistive metasurfaces (2D time crystals). Both designs exploit Floquet harmonic expansions and are validated with a customized harmonic-balance finite-element solver. We report isolation exceeding 46 dB in the optical device and 11 dB in the microwave counterpart. This work introduces a general framework for nonreciprocal negative refraction across frequency regimes, expanding the design space of time-varying metasurfaces and photonic time crystals.