Power analysis of multilayer structures composed of conventional materials and bi-anisotropic metamaterial slabs

In this paper, we analyze wave propagation properties (transmitted, reflected, and absorbed powers) of composite multilayer structures consisting of bi-anisotropic metamaterial (MM) slabs and conventional isotropic materials. We also separately investigate the propagation properties of bi-anisotropic MM slabs and conventional materials to better interpret the results. We consider two different bi-anisotropic MM slab structures composed of only split-ring-resonators (SRRs) and composing SRRs and a rod. In the analysis, we apply the well-known transfer matrix method to obtain transmitted, reflected, and absorbed powers of the composite structures. From the analysis, we note the following three important results. First, while the transmitted powers from forward and backward directions of the multilayer structure are identical (reciprocal feature), reflected (and absorbed) powers from forward and backward directions of the multilayer structure are different. This difference arises from reflection asymmetric nature of the bi-anisotropic MM slabs. Second, whereas the conventional material loss influences propagation characteristics aside resonance frequencies of bi-anisotropic MM slabs, bi-anisotropic MM loss worsens propagation properties of the multilayer structure at resonance frequencies of these slabs. Third, variations in (or determination of) electromagnetic properties of low-loss thin conventional materials in between two bi-anisotropic MM slabs can be realized at frequencies in which conventional materials demonstrate thickness-resonance effect. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America