  Electromagnetic response of metallic rod dimers is theoretically calculated
for arbitrary planar arrangement of rods in the dimer. It is shown that dimers
without an in-plane symmetry axis exhibit elliptical dichroism and act as
"atoms" in planar chiral metamaterials. Due to a very simple geometry of the
rod dimer, such planar metamaterials are much easier in fabrication than
conventional split-ring or gammadion-type structures, and lend themselves to a
simple analytical treatment based on coupled dipole model. Dependencies of
metamaterial's directional asymmetry on the dimer's geometry are established
analytically and confirmed in numerical simulations.
