Effective Medium Response of Metallic Nanowire Arrays with a Kerr-type Dielectric Host

TL;DR

This paper develops a nonlinear effective medium model for metallic nanowire arrays in Kerr-type dielectrics, revealing how nonlinearity influences electromagnetic response and negative refraction phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a nonlinear effective medium theory for nanowire arrays in Kerr media, linking macroscopic fields to conduction currents and potentials with new insights into hyperbolic and negative refraction effects.

Findings

Weak nonlinearity makes the medium behave more like an indefinite medium.

High-field intensities enhance negative refraction at interfaces.

Nonlinear effects modify isofrequency contours and hyperbolicity.

Abstract

We derive an effective medium model to characterize the macroscopic electromagnetic response of metallic nanowire arrays embedded in a host dielectric with a Kerr-type nonlinear permittivity function. It is shown that the macroscopic electromagnetic fields are coupled to the conduction current in the nanowires and to an additional quasi-static potential through a system of nonlinear equations. We prove that a weak nonlinearity leads to an electromagnetic response closer to that of an indefinite medium, and to isofrequency contours with increased hyperbolicity. For high-field intensities the negative refraction of electromagnetic waves at an air nanowire material interface is enhanced when the nanowires are embedded in a self-focusing Kerr medium.