Guiding waves along an infinitesimal line between impedance surfaces

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel electromagnetic mode that guides energy along an infinitesimal line between two impedance surfaces, with controllable confinement and promising applications in photonics and sensing.

Contribution

It presents the discovery and experimental demonstration of a new mode at impedance surface interfaces, enabling ultra-narrow waveguiding with tunable properties.

Findings

Mode exhibits singular field enhancement

Broad bandwidth and direction-dependent polarization

Robustness to certain defects

Abstract

We present a new electromagnetic mode that forms at the interface between two planar surfaces laid side by side in free space, effectively guiding energy along an infinitesimal, one-dimensional line. It is shown that this mode occurs when the boundaries have complementary surface impedances, and it is possible to control the mode confinement by altering their values correspondingly. The mode exhibits singular field enhancement, broad bandwidth, direction-dependent polarization, and robustness to certain defects. As a proof-of-concept, experimental results in the microwave regime are provided using patterned conducting sheets. Our proposed effective-medium-based approach is general, however, thus allowing for potential implementation up to optical frequencies. Our system is promising for applications including integrated photonics, sensing, switching, chiral quantum coupling, and reconfigurable waveguides.