Utilisation of surface magnetoplasmons in the millimetre wavelength range

This paper chronicles the investigations pursued during the period 1976-86 into the behaviour of surface magnetoplasmons in a variety of canonical structures germane to nonreciprocal devices in the millimetre and submillimetre wavelength ranges. Interest focused on performance characteristics for such devices as differential phase shifters and nonreciprocal isolators. Critical to obtaining acceptable performance parameters such as insertion loss are, of course, the loss characteristics of the semiconducting materials. The latest results, based on studies of canonical device models and presuming the use of the best available materials, indicate that acceptable device performance should be attainable. Results are presented that show insertion loss as well as isolation ratio for representative nonreciprocal isolator structures and the attained differential phase shift per unit insertion loss for a canonical differential phase shift configuration