Direct Calculation of Permeability and Permittivity For A Left-Handed Metamaterial
Direct Calculation of Permeability and Permittivity For A Left-Handed Metamaterial
Direct Calculation of Permeability and Permittivity For A Left-Handed Metamaterial
In a paper published in 1968, Veselago introduced the utilizing a commercial electromagnetic-mode solver.5 The
concept of a left-handed 共LH兲 medium—a medium in which standard procedure is to discretize a unit cell of the structure
both the permittivity ⑀ and the permeability are simulta- 共Fig. 1, inset兲, and apply periodic boundary conditions, al-
neously negative.1 Veselago predicted that LH media would lowing a phase advance in one of the directions. In the case
have unique and potentially useful properties, as many basic where we are looking for an effective magnetic response
electromagnetic phenomena, such as the Doppler shift, from the rings, we focus on electromagnetic modes polarized
Snell’s law, and Cerenkov radiation would be ‘‘reversed.’’ such that the magnetic field is parallel to the ring axes. Fig-
The limitation in demonstrating a LH media, however, was ure 1 shows the resulting dispersion curve, which displays a
the lack of a material example possessing a magnetic re- frequency band gap. The effective refractive index n( ) is
sponse to electromagnetic radiation sufficient to result in a related to both the permeability and permittivity according to
negative permeability. We recall that the magnetic suscepti- n( )⫽ 冑⑀ eff()eff(); thus, the band gap of Fig. 1, charac-
bility can be negative 共e.g., diamagnetism兲, but is typically terized by imaginary values of n( ), only indicates that one
very small, and therefore, insufficient to bring ⫽1⫹ or the other material parameter has fallen below zero.
negative. A means of demonstrating the negative permeability was
In 1999, Pendry et al. proposed an artificial system, put forward by Smith et al.,4 who combined the SRR me-
made only of nonmagnetic conducting materials that could dium with a second medium of interacting wires 共Fig. 2,
exhibit a large response to the magnetic field of electromag- inset兲. The wire medium alone can be characterized by an
netic radiation.2 By building a resonance into the structure, effective permittivity having the same form as a dilute, col-
very large positive and negative effective magnetic suscepti- lisionless plasma, or
bilities could be obtained. While the idea of creating mag-
netic materials from conductors is not new,3 the structures
that Pendry et al. suggested were particularly suited for this
purpose, having a very high Q factor and nearly exclusive
magnetic-field coupling. The generic frequency dependence
of the effective permeability that Pendry et al. calculated was
F 20
eff共 兲 ⫽1⫺ , 共1兲
2 ⫺ 20 ⫺i ⌫
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0003-6951/2000/77(14)/2246/3/$17.00 2246 © 2000 American Institute of Physics
On: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 15:19:36
Appl. Phys. Lett., Vol. 77, No. 14, 2 October 2000 Smith et al. 2247
FIG. 2. Dispersion curve 共dashed line兲 for the combined SRR and wire FIG. 3. Calculated permeability 共open and closed circles, triangles兲 and
mediums, using the same dimensions as in Fig. 1. The solid lines correspond permittivity 共diamonds兲 for the left-handed propagation band of the compos-
to the dispersion curves obtained without the wires 共as in Fig. 1兲, shown ite SRR-wire structure. Open circles: 具 B 典 / 具 H 典 method; closed circles: z,n
here to help identify the LH region. method; triangles: currents method. The permittivity was calculated by the
z,n method only.
This article is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AIP content is subject to the terms at: http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP: 177.20.130.9
On: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 15:19:36