Characteristics of surface waves in anisotropic left-handed materials

Abstract

We report the coexistence of TE and TM surface modes in certain same frequency domain at the interface between one isotropic regular medium and another biaxially anistotropic left-handed medium. The conditions for the existence of TE and TM polarized surface waves in biaxially anisotropic left-handed materials are identified, respectively. The Poynting vector and the energy density associated with surface modes are calculated. Depending on the system parameters, either TE or TM surface modes can have the time averaged Poynting vector directed to or opposite to the mode phase velocity. It is seen that the characteristics of surface waves in biaxially anisotropic left-handed media are significantly different from that in isotropic left-handed media.