  Azimuthal orientation and handedness dependence of the optical responses,
accompanied by asymmetric transmission and asymmetric dichroism, were
demonstrated on multilayers constructed with subwavelength periodic arrays of
Babinet complementary miniarrays, illuminated by linearly and circularly
polarized light. In case of single-sided illumination asymmetric optical
responses were observed at the spectral location of maximal cross-polarization
that is accompanied by radiative electric dipoles on the nano-objects; whereas
negative index material phenomenon was demonstrated, where the electric and
magnetic dipoles overlap both spatially and spectrally. The NIM is accompanied
by electric multipoles that add up non-radiatively and correlates with the
magnetic dipoles characteristic on the nano-entities. By illuminating the
multilayer with two counter-propagating circularly polarized beams it was
proven that asymmetrical normal component displacement currents at the bounding
interfaces arising along flat and tilted bands accompany the asymmetric
co-polarized and cross-polarized transmission, respectively. The latter
correlates with the asymmetric dichroism in the cross-polarized signal observed
in case of single-sided circularly polarized light illumination. The dispersion
maps in the single-sided asymmetrical co-polarized reflectance and absorptance
indicate flat bands of analogous and complementary extrema, proving the
dichroic nature of the observed asymmetric phenomena. The multilayer is
proposed as an ultrathin NIM and nonreciprocal nanophotonic element.
