Optical Nanotransmission Lines: Synthesis of Planar Left-Handed Metamaterials in the Infrared and Visible Regimes

Abstract

Following our recent theoretical development of the concept of nano-inductors, nano-capacitors and nano-resistors at optical frequencies and the possibility of synthesizing more complex nano-scale circuits, here we theoretically investigate in detail the problem of optical nano-transmission-lines (NTL) that can be envisioned by properly joining together arrays of these basic nano-scale circuit elements. We show how, in the limit in which these basic circuit elements are closely packed together, the NTLs can be regarded as stacks of plasmonic and non-plasmonic planar slabs, which may be designed to effectively exhibit the properties of planar metamaterials with forward (right-handed) or backward (left-handed) operation. With the proper design, negative refraction and left-handed propagation are shown to be possible in these planar plasmonic guided-wave structures, providing possibilities for sub-wavelength focusing and imaging in planar optics, and laterally-confined waveguiding at IR and visible frequencies. The effective material parameters for such NTLs are derived, and the connection and analogy between these optical NTLs and the double-negative and double-positive metamaterials are also explored. Physical insights and justification for the results are also presented.

26 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in JOSA B, scheduled to appear March 2006

References in corpus (2)

• Circuit elements at optical frequencies: nano-inductors, nano-capacitors and nano-resistors
• Polarizabilities and Effective Parameters for Collections of Spherical Nano-Particles Formed by Pairs of Concentric Double-Negative (DNG), Single-Negative (SNG) and/or Double-Positive (DPS) Metamaterial Layers

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