Gigant optical activity in artificial plane-chiral structures

Recently, much attention is paid to investigation of composite materials, whose characteristics are caused not so much by the properties of its constituent elements as artificially created periodic structure. The plane-stratified structures that leaded to the rotation of the polarization plane of microwave radiation are of interest. The longitudinal dimensions of the classic devices for rotation of a polarization plane are comparable with the wavelength in the operating frequency band. Thus, an ultra compact device built on two closely spaced plane-chiral irises (PChI), which provide the 900 rotation of a polarization plane of electromagnetic wave in a square waveguide was proposed in the papers. Frequency range was a few percent at the loss level not more than 0.1 dB. This structure retains its properties also in free space. This paper presents the results of theoretical analysis and experimental study of the properties of two-layer plane-chiral structure (PChS). The numerical results obtained with the simulator MWD II, which was designed in IRE NAS of Ukraine and based on the mode matching technique and the generalized S-matrices technique, are presented in this paper.