Negative effective permeability and left-handed materials at optical frequencies

TL;DR

This paper proposes nano-inclusions of plasmonic metallic particles that can create optical metamaterials with negative permeability and permittivity, enabling the synthesis of left-handed materials for advanced imaging and nano-optics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel design of nano-inclusions capable of resonant magnetic and electric responses at optical frequencies for metamaterial applications.

Findings

Nano-inclusions exhibit resonant magnetic dipole response in visible range.

Embedded inclusions can produce negative effective permeability.

Combined effects enable left-handed optical metamaterials.

Abstract

We present here the design of nano-inclusions made of properly arranged collections of plasmonic metallic nano-particles that may exhibit a resonant magnetic dipole collective response in the visible domain. When such inclusions are embedded in a host medium, they may provide metamaterials with negative effective permeability at optical frequencies. We also show how the same inclusions may provide resonant electric dipole response and, when combining the two effects at the same frequencies, lefthanded materials with both negative effective permittivity and permeability may be synthesized in the optical domain with potential applications for imaging and nano-optics applications.