Subwavelength electromagnetic diode: One-way response of cascading nonlinear meta-atoms

We propose a scheme for subwavelength electromagnetic diode by employing cascading nonlinear meta-atoms. One-way response is conceptually demonstrated on a microwave transmission line comprising of three metallic ring resonators acting as meta-atoms and a varactor as the nonlinear medium inclusion. Experiments show that our implementation can operate simultaneously as forward diode and backward diode at different frequencies. A transmission contrast of up to 14.7 dB was achieved between forward and backward transmission. Subwavelength size of our diode should be useful for miniaturization of integrated optical nanocircuits.