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Impedance matching of inverted conductors: Two-dimensional beam splitters with divergent gain
- Source :
- Phys. Rev. A 92, 053856 (2015)
- Publication Year :
- 2015
-
Abstract
- A thin conducting sheet - graphene, for example - transmits, absorbs, and reflects radiation. A sheet that is very thin, even vanishingly so, can still produce 50% absorption at normal incidence if it has conductivity corresponding to half the impedance of free space. We find that, regardless of the sheet conductivity, there exists a combination of polarization and angle of incidence that achieves this impedance half-matching condition. If the conducting medium can be inverted, the conductivity is formally negative and the sheet amplifies the incident radiation. To the extent that a negative half-match in a thin sheet can be maintained, enormous single-pass gain in both transmission and reflection is possible. Known semiconductors (e.g., gallium nitride) have the optical properties necessary to give large amplification in a structure that is, remarkably, both thin and nonresonant.<br />Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. Updated to final PRA format with two additional references (1934 Woltersdorff and 1964 Kaplan)
- Subjects :
- Condensed Matter - Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Physics - Optics
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- arXiv
- Journal :
- Phys. Rev. A 92, 053856 (2015)
- Publication Type :
- Report
- Accession number :
- edsarx.1503.03568
- Document Type :
- Working Paper
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.92.053856