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Universal impedance matching and the perfect transmission of white light

Nature Photonics volume 12, pages 143–149 (2018)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 05 June 2018

This article has been updated

Abstract

Light is reflected at the interface between heterogeneous media due to the mismatch of impedance1,2,3. Removing this mismatch using additional materials, a technique known as anti-reflection, has so far been restricted to specific frequencies and incidence angles3,4,5,6,7. The anti-reflection of white light, which requires the simultaneous matching of impedance over extremely wide angular and spectral ranges, has until now been considered impossible. Here, we develop a theory of universal impedance matching and introduce a matching layer that enables the perfect transmission of white light. The ability of a matching layer to assist in omnidirectional and frequency-independent anti-reflection has been confirmed analytically and numerically. We explain the feasibility of a universal matching layer using metamaterials, and demonstrate a transmission rate of over 99% for white light in the visible range with a double-layered dielectric metamaterial. This is confirmed experimentally by demonstrating the omnidirectional anti-reflection of microwaves in heterogeneous media.

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Fig. 1: Perfect transmission of white light with a universal impedance matching layer.
Fig. 2: Omnidirectional and frequency-independent anti-reflection and transmission.
Fig. 3: Metamaterial realization of the UIML.
Fig. 4: Microwave measurement of reflectance using a metamaterial UIML.

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Change history

  • 05 June 2018

    In the version of this Letter originally published, there were errors in equations (2), (3)–(7) and (11), and in the equation in the right panel of Fig. 1b, and some artefacts appeared in Fig. 2b; the details are shown in the correction notice. These errors have now been corrected in the online versions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Samsung Science and Technology Foundation under project no. SSTF- BA1401-05. Q.-H.P. thanks Y. Kivshar and W. Choi for comments and encouragement.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Ku Im and Ji-Hun Kang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Korea University, Seoul, Korea

    Ku Im, Ji-Hun Kang & Q-Han Park

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  1. Ku Im
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Contributions

Q.-H.P. developed the theory with numerical tests and wrote the paper. K.I., J.-H.K. and Q.-H.P. conducted the microwave experiments and analysed the data.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Q-Han Park.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary discussion, conditions and derivations; Supplementary Figures 1–6; Supplementary References 1–9.

Supplementary Video 1

Propagation of an optical pulse, moving to the right, incident onto a quarter-wave anti-reflection layer.

Supplementary Video 2

Propagation of an optical pulse, moving to the right, incident onto a universal impedance matching layer.

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Im, K., Kang, JH. & Park, QH. Universal impedance matching and the perfect transmission of white light. Nature Photon 12, 143–149 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-018-0098-3

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