Boundary conditions for the effective-medium description of subwavelength multilayered structures

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive theory for boundary conditions in subwavelength multilayered metamaterials, emphasizing the importance of nonlocal effects and layer sequence, to improve the predictive accuracy of effective-medium models.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed treatment of boundary conditions considering nonlocal responses, revealing limitations of local models and clarifying the influence of layer arrangement.

Findings

Bulk response independent of unit cell choice

Boundary conditions highly sensitive to layer sequence

Experimental implications for probing nonlocality

Abstract

Nanostructures with one-dimensional periodicity, such as multilayered structures, are currently in the focus of active research in the context of hyperbolic metamaterials and photonic topological structures. An efficient way to describe the materials with subwavelength periodicity is based on the concept of effective material parameters, which can be rigorously derived incorporating both local and nonlocal responses. However, to provide any predictions relevant for applications, effective material parameters have to be supplemented by appropriate boundary conditions. In this work, we provide a comprehensive treatment of spatially dispersive bulk properties of multilayered metamaterials as well as derive boundary conditions for the averaged fields. We demonstrate that local bianisotropic model does not capture all the features related to second-order nonlocal effects in the bulk of metamaterial. As we prove, while the bulk response of multilayers does not depend on the unit cell choice, effective boundary conditions are strongly sensitive to the sequence of layers and multilayer termination. The developed theory provides a clear interpretation of the recent experiments on the reflectance of all-dielectric deeply subwavelength multilayers suggesting further avenues to experimentally probe electromagnetic nonlocality in metamaterials.