Feynman’s method in chiral nanorod-based metamaterial nanoplasmonics

Abstract

We propose a theoretical approach to some of the nanorod-based metamaterial implementations that does not depend on macroscopic electrodynamics. The approach is motivated by the fact that in actual experiments the incident electromagnetic wave encounters a metamaterial structure which is planar in its shape, contains a layer or two of artificially created building blocks, and therefore cannot be regarded as a three-dimensional continuous medium. This leads to a theoretical framework in which the phenomenological concept of refractive index loses its principled meaning, and the deeper concept of scattering is taking center stage. Our proposal and its mathematical realization rely heavily on Feynman’s explanation of the physical origin of the index of refraction and on his formula for the field of a plane of oscillating charges. We provide a complete proof of Feynman’s formula, filling in some steps that were missing in the original derivation, and then generalize it to the case of a finite disk, which may be relevant to the actual experiments involving laser beams. We then show how the formula can be applied to metamaterial nanoplasmonics by considering some subtle interference effects in uniform laser beams striking metamaterial plates. The first two effects use a single layer of aligned plasmonic nanorods, while the third uses a single layer of gyrotropic elements that may conveniently be described by the celebrated Born-Kuhn oscillator model. The considered effects can potentially be used in the development of quality standards for various metamaterial devices.