Recently, there has been an increased interest in studying extraordinary optical transmission (EOT) through subwavelength aperture arrays perforated in a metallic film. In this Letter, we report that the transmission of an incident acoustic wave through a one-dimensional acoustic grating can also be drastically enhanced. This extraordinary acoustic transmission (EAT) has been investigated both theoretically and experimentally, showing that the coupling between the diffractive wave and the wave-guide mode plays an important role in EAT. This phenomenon can have potential applications in acoustics and also might provide a better understanding of EOT in optical subwavelength systems.

We have fabricated a metamaterial of metal/semiconductor/metal sandwich nanostrips structure comprising a pair of gold strips and a vanadium dioxide (VO2) strip. The optical response of the metamaterial has been studied. The results indicate the nanostructure with VO2 strips can be used as a temperature-controlling optical switch and the mechanism of this switch can be explained by the magnetic resonance.

Gold nanorod has generated great research interest due to its tunable longitudinal plasmon resonance. However, little progress has been made in the understanding of the effect. A major reason is that, except for the metallic spheres and ellipsoids, the interaction between light and nanoparticles is generally insoluble. In this paper, a new scheme has been proposed to study the plasmon resonance of gold nanorod, in which the nanorod is modeled as an LC circuit with an inductance and a capacitance. The obtained resonance wavelength is dependent on not only aspect ratio but also rod radius, suggesting the importance of self-inductance and the breakdown of linear scaling. Moreover, the cross sections for light scattering and absorption have been deduced analytically, giving rise to a Lorentzian line-shape for the extinction spectrum. The result provides us with new insight into the phenomenon.