Resolving the wave-vector in negative refractive media: The sign of $\sqrt{Z}$

Abstract

We address the general issue of resolving the wave-vector in complex electromagnetic media including negative refractive media. This requires us to make a physical choice for the sign of a square-root imposed merely by conditions of causality. By considering the analytic behaviour of the wave-vector in the complex plane, it is shown that there are a total of eight physically distinct cases in the four quadrants of two Riemann sheets.

3 pages, 2 figures, RevTeX

References in corpus (2)

• Resonant and anti-resonant frequency dependence of the effective parameters of metamaterials
• Sign of refractive index and group velocity in left-handed media

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