Negative Index of Refraction

By: Jason KaszpurenkoJournal Club1/16/09

Overview

Both articles that I read were from a Materials Research Society October 2008 Bulletin

General Overview about negative index materials: What is ti What properties does it have What possible applications

Making Negative Index of Refraction materials Two types of Negative Index Materials Attempts to get into the optical range

Questions (Yours and mine)

Overview

Negative index of refraction was first theorized by Victor Veselago in 1968

The idea that a material could have both negative permittivity and permeability

If it had both of these it would not violate the laws of physics

First confirmed by J. Pendry in 2000

Overview

Index of refraction is normally defined by n=c/v or n=(εμ)^0.5 c is the speed of light in vacuum, v is the speed of

light in a medium, ε is permittivity and μ is permeability

ε can be found negative naturally in several metals such as gold and silver but μ needs to be engineered artificially to be negative

The shortest wavelength observed with this property is 710 nm

Overview In a normal material the k, E and H

of the material right handed set (good old right hand rule)

In negative index materials (NIM) the k, E and H form a left handed set (your students were doing it for negative index of materials)

This causes the wave’s phase front to move in the opposite direction of the wave itself

The energy of the wave is associated with the group velocity

To the right we have an example of this. The Gaussian wave packet moves to the right while the wave front, (red point) moves to the left

W. Park, J. Kim, MRS bulletin Oct 2008

Optical Properties of negative index materials Negative index materials can be used to

make:Electromagnetic cloaking devicesSuper lenses filtersSub wavelength waveguides and antennas

I’m going to talk about the super lenses

Super lenses

In most optics the limiting factor is the wavelength of light

The evanescent waves, waves which exponentially decay in mater, actually contain information that is smaller than the wavelength, but this is normally lost

In negative index materials the evanescent waves are actually enhanced

Evanescent waves

Image a: The red lines represent the evanescent waves fon n<0 with the light getting focused. While the blue dotted are for n>0 and the light getting scattered. Image b is the amplitude of the evanescent light in negative and positive materials. Image c shows a simulation of this phenomenon. The smaller image than source size means enhanced evanescent waves.

W. Park, J. Kim, MRS bulletin Oct 2008

Elaboration of conditions needed for negative index materials Originally Veselago argued that you need the real and

complex parts of permeability and permittivity to be negative

This is an over constrained condition the real one is: ε’μ”+ ε”μ’<0 (’ is real and ” is complex part)

If ε’<0 or μ’<0 we have a single-negative NIM (SN-NIM) If ε’<0 and μ’<0 we have a double-negative NIM (DN-

NIM), DN-NIM have the potential to have less losses and are considered better because of this

Making μ < 0

Three common types of magnetic resonators are Bihelix (figure a) this resonator uses two separate strips of the same metal Split-ring resonators (SRR) (figure b) uses to different rings and is a very

common choice but the magnetic response becomes saturated in the visual regime.

Pair of Nanorods is the last configuration, this was used by the authors to get into the optical regime

Chettiar, et all, MRS bulletin Oct 2008

Synthesis

An attempt was made to synthesize nanorods with different deposition rates Al2O3 was deposited in

between the layers Ag nanorods

Sample A was deposited at 2 A/s while sample B was deposited at 0.5 A/s

Using AFM cross sections we can see that the faster deposition rate created (right) a rougher surface than the slower deposition (lower right)

Chettiar, et all, MRS bulletin Oct 2008

Permittivity and Permeability

Chettiar, et all, MRS bulletin Oct 2008

Sample A has a high deposition rate and Sample B has a low deposition rate

Results for different spacing

When varying the spacing of the magnets are verried different frequencies of light are allowed to pass, but electrons view it is a metal Image a: Transmission mode

with TM polarization Image b: Transmission mode

with TE polarization Image c: Reflection mode with

TM polarization Image d: Reflection mode with

TE polarization

Conclusion

Although theorized over 40 years ago NIM have only been made within the last decade

NIM act in many unconventional ways, wave phase front moves in opposite direction of group velocity, evanescent waves increase….

These properties lend themselves to making unique devices like super lenses that can overcome traditional optical limits

The difficulty in making them comes from the negative permeability, which has to be artificially manufactured

The optical regime is just being realized

Questions

How does varying the oxide material in-between the nanorods effect the index of refraction

With evanescent waves increasing in amplitude, how is energy being conserved?

What attempts have there been on working on different materials with a negative permittivity