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onsider light passing through a plate ic properties that are difficult or impossible to The metamaterial design best suited to
Fig. 1. (A) A single element of Swiss roll metamaterial. (B) An array of such surface. The red circles show the location of the rolls, which were 1 cm in
elements is assembled into a slab and the RF magnetic field from an diameter. (C) The resulting image taken in an MRI machine, showing that
M-shaped antenna, placed below the slab, is reproduced on the upper the field pattern is transmitted back and forth through the slab.
have unique properties, at these lower frequen- sponse. But metamaterials can take us even rameter, the refractive index, n, given by n ⫽
cies magnetism is also exhibited by existing further, to materials that have no analog in 公ε. A wave travels more slowly in a medium
conventional materials. As we look to higher conventional materials. such as glass or water by a factor of n. All
frequencies, on the other hand, conventional known transparent materials possess a positive
magnetism tails off and artificial magnetism Negative Material Response index because ε and are both positive.
may play an increasingly important role. A harmonic oscillator has a resonant frequen- Yet, the allowed range of material re-
A frequency range of particular interest occurs cy, at which a small driving force can pro- sponse does not preclude us from considering
between 1 and 3 THz, a region that represents a duce a very large displacement. Think of a a medium for which both ε and are nega-
natural breakpoint between magnetic and electric mass on a spring: Below the resonant fre- tive. More than 35 years ago Victor Veselago
response in conventional materials. At lower fre- quency, the mass is displaced in the same pondered the properties of just such a medi-
quencies, inherently magnetic materials (those direction as the applied force. However, um (7). Because the product ε is positive,
whose magnetism results from unpaired electron above the resonant frequency, the mass is taking the square root gives a real number for
spins) can be found that exhibit resonances. At displaced in a direction opposite to the ap- the index. We thus conclude that materials
higher frequencies, nearly all materials have elec- plied force. Because a material can be mod- with negative ε and are transparent to light.
tronic resonances that result from lattice vibrations eled as a set of harmonically bound charges, There is a wealth of well-known phenom-
or other mechanisms and give rise to electric the negative resonance response translates ena associated with electromagnetic wave
response. The mid-THz region represents the directly to a negative material response, with propagation in materials. All of these phe-
point where electric response is dying out from the the applied electric or magnetic field acting nomena must be reexamined when ε and
high-frequency end and magnetic response is dy- on the bound charges corresponding to the are simultaneously negative. For example,
ing out from the low-frequency end: Here, nature force and the responding dipole moment corre- the Doppler shift is reversed, with a light
does not provide any strongly dielectric or mag- sponding to the displacement. A resonance in source moving toward an observer being
netic materials. the material response leads to negative values down-shifted in frequency. Likewise, the
REFERENCES This article cites 32 articles, 3 of which you can access for free
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/305/5685/788#BIBL
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