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Generalized transverse-electric Brewster effect and perfect absorption with reflectionless plasmonic metasurfaces

Oksana Mankovska1, Tymofii Shudra2, Artem Hrinchenko3, and Oleh Yermakov3,4,*

  • *Contact author: oe.yermakov@gmail.com
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Phys. Rev. A 112, 053516 – Published 17 November, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/27ks-415c

Abstract

The polarization of incident light may be tuned with the Brewster effect that is widely used in photography and optical coatings. The Brewster angle demonstrating zero reflection is usually observed for transverse-magnetic polarized light, but recent studies have discovered the generalized Brewster effect in transverse-electric polarization using nanostructures. In this work, we discover the way of the Brewster angle and perfect absorption control in transverse-electric polarization with two-dimensional plasmonic materials and nanostructures. We derive the analytical model of the reflectionless metasurface described by the surface conductivity within and beyond the total internal reflection state leading to the perfect absorption and generalized Brewster's angle, respectively. Then, we support our analytical results by the full-wave numerical simulation using the effective two-dimensional sheet obeying the Drude-Lorentz dispersion model and the real design of plasmonic anisotropic metasurface based on gold nanodisks. The results obtained open new opportunities for the planar polarization optics and related devices including polarization transformers, optical isolators, antireflection coatings, and biodetectors.

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Phys. Rev. A 112, 053516– Published 17 November, 2025
  • Received 16 July 2025
  • Revised 6 October 2025
  • Accepted 27 October 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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