Engineered Optical Nonlocality in Nanostructured Metamaterials

TL;DR

This paper investigates how nanostructured metal-dielectric metamaterials exhibit engineered optical nonlocality due to surface plasmon polaritons, enabling new wave phenomena not predicted by effective medium theory.

Contribution

It demonstrates that structural engineering of metal-dielectric layers can control optical nonlocality and surface wave behavior in metamaterials.

Findings

Strong optical nonlocality observed due to surface plasmon polaritons

Existence of an additional extraordinary wave in the metamaterial

Splitting of TM-polarized beam at the interface

Abstract

We analyze dispersion properties of metal-dielectric nanostructured metamaterials. We demonstrate that, in a sharp contrast to the results for the corresponding effective medium, the structure demonstrates strong optical nonlocality due to excitation of surface plasmon polaritons that can be engineered by changing a ratio between the thicknesses of metal and dielectric layers. In particular, this nonlocality allows the existence of an additional extraordinary wave that manifests itself in the splitting of the TM-polarized beam scattered at an air-metamaterial interface.