Line Degeneracy and Strong Spin-Orbit Coupling of Light with Bulk Bianisotropic Metamaterials

Abstract

© 2015 American Physical Society. Propagation of light in a medium is dictated by equifrequency surfaces (EFSs), which play a similar role as Fermi surfaces for electrons in crystals. Engineering the equifrequency surface of light through structuring a photonic medium enables superior control over light propagation that goes beyond natural materials. In this Letter, we show that a bulk metamaterial with a suitably designed bianisotropy can exhibit line degeneracy in its EFSs that consist of two ellipsoids of opposite helicity states intersecting with each other. Very interestingly, light propagating along the direction of the line degeneracy experiences strong spin-dependent photon deflection, or optical spin Hall effect, which may lead to applications in optical signal processing and spin-optical manipulations. We provide a realistic metamaterial design to show that the required bianisotropy can be readily obtained.