Quantum optical effective-medium theory for loss-compensated metamaterials

Abstract

A central aim in metamaterial research is to engineer sub-wavelength unit cells that give rise to desired effective-medium properties and parameters, such as a negative refractive index. Ideally one can disregard the details of the unit cell and employ the effective description instead. A popular strategy to compensate for the inevitable losses in metallic components of metamaterials is to add optical gain material. Here we study the quantum optics of such loss-compensated metamaterials at frequencies for which effective parameters can be unambiguously determined. We demonstrate that the usual effective parameters are insufficient to describe the propagation of quantum states of light. Furthermore, we propose a quantum-optical effective-medium theory instead and show that it correctly predicts the properties of the light emerging from loss-compensated metamaterials.

6 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (13)

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• Canonical quantization of macroscopic electromagnetism
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• QED commutation relations for inhomogeneous Kramers-Kronig dielectrics
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• Universal description of channel plasmons in two-dimensional materials
• Entanglement dynamics of two two-level atoms in the vicinity of an invisibility cloak
• Quantum optical effective-medium theory for layered metamaterials
• Quantum Optics of Non-Hermitian Optical Systems: Propagation of Squeezed State of Light through Dispersive non-Hermitian Optical Bilayers
• Stable-to-unstable transition in quantum friction
• Relativistic and non-relativistic quantum Brownian motion in an anisotropic dissipative medium
• First-principles study of the optical properties of BaMoO3/SrHfO3 hyperbolic metamaterials
• Quantum light propagation in a uniformly moving dissipative slab
• Non-monotonic Casimir interaction: The role of amplifying dielectrics
• Trapped-mode excitation in all-dielectric metamaterials with loss and gain