Realizability of metamaterials with prescribed electric permittivity and magnetic permeability tensors

Abstract

We show that any pair of real symmetric tensors and can be realized as the effective electric permittivity and effective magnetic permeability of a metamaterial at a given fixed frequency. The construction starts with two extremely low-loss metamaterials, with arbitrarily small microstructure, whose existence is ensured by the work of Bouchitté and Bourel and Bouchitté and Schweizer: one having, at the given frequency, a permittivity tensor with exactly one negative eigenvalue, and a positive permeability tensor; and the other having a positive permittivity tensor, and a permeability tensor having exactly one negative eigenvalue. To achieve the desired effective properties, these materials are laminated together in a hierarchical multiple rank laminate structure, with widely separated length scales, and varying directions of lamination, but with the largest length scale still much shorter than the wavelengths and attenuation lengths in the macroscopic effective medium.