J. Phys.: Condens. Matter

Volume 14, Page 6383 - 6394

2002

Magnetic Activity at Infrared Frequencies in Structured Metallic Photonic Crystals

 

Stephen O’Brien and JB Pendry

Abstract:

We derive the effective permeability and permittivity of a nano-structured metallic photonic crystal by analyzing the complex reflection and transmission coefficients for slabs of various thicknesses. These quantities were calculated using the transfer matrix method. Our results indicate that these structures could be used to realize a negative effective permeability, at least up to infrared frequencies. The origin of the negative permeability is a resonance due to the inductance and capacitance of the structure. We also present an analytic model for the effective permeability of the crystal. The model reveals the importance of the inertial inductance of the electrons in the metal in calculating the resonance frequency. We find that this additional contribution to the inductance has implications for the design of metallic magnetic structures in the optical region of the spectrum. We show that the magnetic activity in the structure is accompanied by the concentration of the incident field energy into very small volumes within the structure. This property will allow us to considerably enhance non-linear effects with minute quantities of material.

 

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