Large quality factor in sheet metamaterials made from dark dielectric meta-atoms

TL;DR

This paper presents a low-loss dielectric metamaterial with high quality factor using dark bound states, enabling novel electromagnetic properties like negative permittivity or permeability.

Contribution

The authors demonstrate a dispersion-engineered dielectric meta-atom with a significantly higher quality factor than metal-based counterparts, advancing low-loss metamaterials.

Findings

Achieved high Q-factor in dielectric meta-atoms

Demonstrated negative permittivity and permeability in sheet metamaterials

Experimental validation of dispersion-engineered dielectric metamaterials

Abstract

Metamaterials-or artificial electromagnetic materials-can create media with properties unattainable in nature, but mitigating dissipation is a key challenge for their further development. Here, we demonstrate a low-loss metamaterial by exploiting dark bound states in dielectric inclusions coupled to the external waves by small nonresonant metallic antennas. We experimentally demonstrate a dispersion-engineered metamaterial based on a meta-atom made from alumina, and we show that its resonance has a much larger quality factor than metal-based meta-atoms. Finally, we show that our dielectric meta-atom can be used to create sheet metamaterials with negative permittivity or permeability.