Emulation of metamaterial waveguides

Abstract

In this work, we are interested by emulating metamaterial microwave waveguides which behave like conventional metallic ones. We use metamaterial layers based on two types of unit cells. The first one is a connected cross type unit cell which leads to a metamaterial with a near zero refraction index (n1≈ 0). The second one is a disconnected cross type unit cell which leads to a metamaterial with a refraction index greater than unity (n2 >1). With these two type of metamaterials we can define, in the metamaterial layer, different sections each one can have a refraction index equal to n1 or n2. Using these metamaterial layers we can build a metamaterial waveguide. This latter is obtained by stacking a number of layers. The waveguide is obtained by selecting an inner section with a refraction index n2 and an outer section with a refraction index n1 close to zero which plays a similar role as a metallic reflector to form the waveguide.