Anomalous reflection and excitation of surface waves in metamaterials

TL;DR

This paper investigates how layered metamaterials can cause unusual electromagnetic wave reflections, including total backward reflection due to resonant surface wave excitation, revealing novel optical behaviors.

Contribution

It demonstrates that periodic variations in layered structures lead to anomalous reflection phenomena, especially total backward reflection via surface wave resonance in metamaterials.

Findings

Specular reflection vanishes in certain layered structures.

Incident energy is totally reflected backward under resonance conditions.

Resonant excitation of leaking surface waves causes anomalous reflection.

Abstract

We consider reflection of electromagnetic waves from layered structures with various dielectric and magnetic properties, including metamaterials. Assuming periodic variations in the permittivity, we find that the reflection is in general anomalous. In particular, we note that the specular reflection vanishes and that the incident energy is totally reflected in the backward direction, when the conditions for resonant excitation of leaking surface waves are fulfilled.