The giant enhancement of nonreciprocal radiation in Thue-morse aperiodic structures

• The strong nonreciprocal radiation effect in Thue-morse aperiodic structure is first proposed and investigated. • The giant enhancement of nonreciprocal radiation is realized at the wavelength of 16 μm, which results from to the excitation of TPPs, and the performance could be expanded to the waveband smaller than 16 μm. • The aperiodic structure exhibits better nonreciprocity than the periodic and quasi-periodic structure for not only operating at smaller incident angle but also at shorter wavelength. • The designed structure can be employed to verify the Kirchhoff’s law with nonreciprocal mediums and will prompt the development of energy harvesting devices and thermal emitters. Nonreciprocal radiation has potential applications in the fields of aerospace, energy conversion, and communications. In this paper, the strong nonreciprocal radiation effect in Thue-morse aperiodic structure is systematically investigated. It is achieved by placing a Thue-morse aperiodic magnetophotonic crystal atop a metallic mirror backed with a dielectric substrate. The giant enhancement of nonreciprocal radiation is achieved at the wavelength of 16 μm when the applied magnetic field is 3 T and the incident angle is 60°. This giant enhancement of nonreciprocity is attributed to the Tamm plasmon polaritons (TPPs) excited at the interface between the Thue-morse aperiodic magnetophotonic crystal and the metal mirror, and is confirmed by investigating the distribution of the normalized magnetic field amplitude. Besides, the performance of the enhanced nonreciprocal radiation could be expanded to the waveband smaller than 16 μm. The novelty of this work is that a new scheme is proposed to achieve giant enhancement of nonreciprocal radiation with lamellar structure. It is believed such structure can be employed to verify the Kirchhoff’s law with nonreciprocal mediums and will prompt the development of light harvesting devices and thermal emitters.