Magnetic hyperbolic optical metamaterials
- Australian National Univ., Canberra, ACT (Australia). Nonlinear Physics Center and Center for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS)
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center
- Australian National Univ., Canberra, ACT (Australia). Nonlinear Physics Center and Center for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS); Univ. of Jena (Germany). Inst. of Applied Physics
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); King Abdulaziz Univ., Jeddah (Saudi Arabia). Dept. of Physics
Strongly anisotropic media where the principal components of electric permittivity or magnetic permeability tensors have opposite signs are termed as hyperbolic media. Such media support propagating electromagnetic waves with extremely large wave vectors exhibiting unique optical properties. However, in all artificial and natural optical materials studied to date, the hyperbolic dispersion originates solely from the electric response. This then restricts material functionality to one polarization of light and inhibits free-space impedance matching. Such restrictions can be overcome in media having components of opposite signs for both electric and magnetic tensors. Here we present the experimental demonstration of the magnetic hyperbolic dispersion in three-dimensional metamaterials. We also measure metamaterial isofrequency contours and reveal the topological phase transition between the elliptic and hyperbolic dispersion. In the hyperbolic regime, we demonstrate the strong enhancement of thermal emission, which becomes directional, coherent and polarized. These findings show the possibilities for realizing efficient impedance-matched hyperbolic media for unpolarized light.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231
- OSTI ID:
- 1414755
- Journal Information:
- Nature Communications, Journal Name: Nature Communications Vol. 7; ISSN 2041-1723
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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