Resilience of circular-polarization-state-sensitive reflection against morphological disorder in chiral structures

Abstract

Morphological disorder is commonplace in bioworld structures, as exemplified by the layered helical structures in the exocuticle in many beetle species. Circular-polarization-state selective reflection from disordered chiral structures was theoretically explored, the disorder being that each helical turn may be different from its adjacent helical turns. The boundary-value problem of plane-wave reflection by a disordered chiral structure was solved. Numerical results indicate the remarkable resilience of circular-polarization-state-selective reflection against morphological disorder.