Similar structures, different characteristics: circular dichroism of metallic helix arrays with single-, double-, and triple-helical structures.

We fabricated three-dimensional metallic helix arrays with single-, double-, and triple-helical structures. The transmission performances with the normal incident angle were measured in the microwave frequency of 12-18 GHz. For the single- and double-helical structures, giant circular dichroism with fairly wide bands is observed in the transmission spectra. However, the triple-helical structure does not exhibit circular dichroism. Based on the phenomenon of circular dichroism, the single- and double-helical structures can be used as broadband circular polarizers in the microwave region, but triple-helical ones cannot. The experiments have a good agreement with our simulation results, which were studied by the finite-difference time domain method.