Manipulation of dark photonic angular momentum states via magneto-optical effect for tunable slow-light performance.

We propose a novel scheme in realizing tunable slow-light performance by manipulating dark photonic angular momentum states (PAMSs) in metamaterials via the magneto-optical effect. We show that by applying a static magnetic field B, some pairs of sharp transmission dips can be observed in the background transparency window of a complex metamaterial design. Each pair of transmission dips are related to the excitation of dark PAMSs with opposite topological charges -m and +m, with a lifted degeneracy due to the classic analogue of Zeeman effect. Nonreciprocal characteristics can be observed in the distributions of field amplitude and transverse energy flux. The performance of slow light, including the group index ng, its abnormal feature, the associated strong absorption and the dependence with B are also discussed.