Interferometric description of optical metamaterials

We introduce a simple theoretical model that describes the interaction of light with optical metamaterials in terms of interfering optical plane waves. In this model, a metamaterial is considered to consist of planar arrays of densely packed nanoparticles. In the analysis, each such array reduces to an infinitely thin homogeneous sheet. The transmission and reflection coefficients of this sheet are found to be equal to those of an isolated nanoparticle array and, therefore, they are easy to evaluate numerically for arbitrary shapes and arrangements of the particles. The presented theory enables fast calculation of electromagnetic fields interacting with a metamaterial slab of an arbitrary size, which, for example, can be used to retrieve the effective refractive index and wave impedance in the material. The model is also shown to accurately describe optically anisotropic metamaterials that in addition exhibit strong spatial dispersion, such as bifacial metamaterials. 1 Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. New Journal of Physics 15 (2013) 113044 1367-2630/13/113044+13$33.00 © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft