Light-controllable split-ring resonators

The paper presents a new approach for designing electromagnetic metamaterials which can be controlled by an external light source. The design of light-tunable split-ring resonators loaded by a varactor diode and biased by a photodiode operating in photovoltaic mode is proposed. We demonstrate experimentally that magnetic resonance of a split-ring resonator can be tuned by changing the intensity of an external light source. Moreover, for two coupled resonators we show that we can achieve light-induced switching between dark- and bright-mode responses.