Optical components using gauge-field metamaterials

Gauge fields and associated effective magnetic fields in the real space provide an alternative way in manipulating light. While the sizes and shapes of the local dispersion surfaces are conventionally varied in a gradient material profile, the gauge field approach manipulates light by shifting the centers of the local dispersion surfaces from place to place. The existence of such a gauge field has been proved by recent experiments and such a concept has been applied to achieve novel wave phenomena, such as negative refraction and one-way waveguide using dynamic modulation (Q. Lin and S. Fan, Phys. Rev. X 4, 2014, pp. 031031). Based on these recent developments, we investigate the materialization of such a gauge field using a specific type of anisotropic metamaterials. By using such metamaterials, we further design different optical components enabled by these gauge field profiles, such as beam splitters and asymmetric light propagation through a ring resonator with gauge fields.