Transmission line models for metamaterials

Contacts:

Andrei Lavrinenko, DTU Fotonik, 4525-6392 (alav@fotonik.dtu.dk)

Radu Malureanu, DTU Fotonik, 4525-6377 (rmal@fotonik.dtu.dk)

Equivalence between material properties and circuit elements to be used for calculating material response [1].

Designing metamaterials is one of the most demanding design tasks nowadays.

One has to start with the (infamous but well-known) Maxwell’s equations and … crawl up from there. Long, tedious simulations will do that, but we live in a fast-moving world so let’s try to simplify all this stuff a bit and see what we come out with.

What if, instead of Maxwell’s equations, we use the electric circuits theory? It is way simpler but … is there a way to use it? and … Is it accurate enough in optics application?

Yes! and … Yes! Just move from one formula to another so, instead of long calculations with integrals and derivatives, let’s use short simple calculations of electronic resonant circuits. Still, it’s not so simple. In order to completely mimic a material with RLC circuitry one has to take into consideration also the interaction between various meta-material parts and their influence.

This project is a numerical one that aims in finding a direct correspondence between the material constitutive blocks’ dimensions and its frequency behaviour thus enabling the use of fast and reliable techniques for finding the best suited parameters to be used to fabricate such structures.

[1] Engheta, Nader, “Circuits with Light at Nanoscales: Optical Nanocircuits Inspired by Metamaterials“,Science, 317, 1698-1702, (2007)