Additional boundary condition for a wire medium connected to a metallic surface

In this work, we demonstrate that the interaction of electromagnetic waves with a microstructured material formed by metallic wires connected to a metallic surface can be described using homogenization methods provided an additional boundary condition (ABC) is considered. The ABC is derived by taking into account the specific microstructure of the wire medium. To illustrate the application of the result, we characterize a substrate formed by an array of tilted metallic wires connected to a ground plane, demonstrating that in such a configuration the wire medium behaves essentially as a material with extreme optical anisotropy and that in some circumstances the substrate can be seen as an impedance surface. 4 Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed. New Journal of Physics 10 (2008) 053011 1367-2630/08/053011+17$30.00 © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft