Boundary Effects of Weak Nonlocality in Multilayered Dielectric Metamaterials

Abstract

Harnessing the effects of spatial dispersion (nonlocality) in metamaterials is a challenge relevant to many applications in optics and photonics, from ultrafast phenomena to chemical and biological sensing. In deeply subwavelength dielectric multilayers these nonlocal effects are generally negligible, but there are critical regimes where they can be amplified, yielding ultrasensitive optical responses. In an unusual approach, the authors interpret these effects in terms of error propagation in dynamical maps, leading to simple, insightful, closed-form solutions that elucidate the roles and effects of the main parameters and aid the identification of additional critical regimes.