DOI: 10.1002/adma.200600106. Negative‐Index Materials: New Frontiers in Optics

Negative‐Index Materials: New Frontiers in Optics

10.1002/adma.200600106

Crossref journal-article

Wiley

Advanced Materials (311)

Abstract

AbstractA lot of recent interest has been focused on a new class of materials, the so‐called left‐handed materials (LHMs) or negative‐index materials, which exhibit highly unusual electromagnetic properties and hold promise for new device applications. These materials do not exist in nature and can only be fabricated artificially; for this reason, they are called metamaterials. Their unique properties are not determined by the fundamental physical properties of their constituents, but rather by the shape and distribution of the specific patterns included in them. Metamaterials can be designed to exhibit both electric and magnetic resonances that can be separately tuned to occur in frequency bands from megahertz to terahertz frequencies, and hopefully to the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum. This article presents a short history of the field, describes the underlying physics, and reviews the experimental and theoretical status of the field at present. Many interesting questions on how to fabricate more isotropic LHMs, on how to push the operational frequency to optical wavelengths, how to reduce the losses, and how to incorporate active or nonlinear materials in LHMs remain to be explored further.

Bibliography

Soukoulis, C. M., Kafesaki, M., & Economou, E. N. (2006). NegativeâIndex Materials: New Frontiers in Optics. Advanced Materials, 18(15), 1941â1952. Portico.

Authors 3

C. M. Soukoulis (first)
M. Kafesaki (additional)
E. N. Economou (additional)

References 74 Referenced 184

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In lossy materials it is possible for the real part ofnto be negative without the real parts of μ and ϵ simultaneously being negative. This is the case in the recent work of Zhang et al. [40b]. This can happen if the imaginary parts ofϵandμare sufficiently large because in a lossy materialn = n′ + in″ and alson = ϵzand$ z = {\sqrt \mu / \varepsilon} $. After some algebra we obtainn′ = ϵ′z′–ϵ″z″ and$ z = {\sqrt ( \mu \prime \varepsilon \prime + \mu \prime \prime \varepsilon \prime \prime) / \varepsilon^2 + i ( \mu \prime \prime \varepsilon \prime - \mu \prime \varepsilon \prime \prime) / \varepsilon^2} $ so it is possible to haven′ < 0 provided that ϵ″z″ > ϵ′z′. In this scenario however the imaginary parts lead to dominant losses such that we have a transmission gap with some negative phase shift rather than LH transmission (with some losses). This type of negativenshould not be considered LH behavior. In our experiments [54 55] although we have considerably large imaginary parts the behavior is still dominated by the negative real part ofnat the high‐frequency side where we find the LH behavior.
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Dates

Type	When
Created	19 years, 1 month ago (July 11, 2006, 11:17 a.m.)
Deposited	1 year, 10 months ago (Oct. 17, 2023, 9:18 p.m.)
Indexed	3 days, 21 hours ago (Aug. 23, 2025, 9:23 p.m.)
Issued	19 years, 1 month ago (July 11, 2006)
Published	19 years, 1 month ago (July 11, 2006)
Published Online	19 years, 1 month ago (July 11, 2006)
Published Print	19 years ago (Aug. 4, 2006)

Funders 0

None

BibTeX

@article{Soukoulis_2006, title={Negative‐Index Materials: New Frontiers in Optics}, volume={18}, ISSN={1521-4095}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adma.200600106}, DOI={10.1002/adma.200600106}, number={15}, journal={Advanced Materials}, publisher={Wiley}, author={Soukoulis, C. M. and Kafesaki, M. and Economou, E. N.}, year={2006}, month=jul, pages={1941–1952} }

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