Controlling Electromagnetic Wave Based on Magnetic Metamaterials

Abstract

Metamaterials are composite artificial materials composed of sub-wavelength resonant building blocks designed with state-of-the-art configurations, which exhibit novel and unique electromagnetic (EM) properties. The building blocks are usually made of metallic material, where surface plasmon polaritons can be excited at the interface, leading to many interesting and promising phenomena and applications. However, some drawbacks are accompanied such as intrinsic loss, narrow working frequency, and tunability limitation. We have designed a class of metamaterials composed of building blocks made of ferrite materials, it is accordingly termed magnetic metamaterials (MM). It is demonstrated that with the MM we can construct a magnetically tunable negative index material with the impedance matched to the air. The excitation of the magnetic surface plasmon (MSP) resonance can also be observed in the MM. Due to the MSP resonance and the time reversal symmetry breaking nature of the MM, the unidirectional waveguiding of the EM wave is demonstrated.