Inspired by the concept of complementary media, we experimentally demonstrate that an engineered metamaterial made of alternating, stripe layers of negatively refracting (photonic crystals) and positively refracting (air) materials strongly collimates a beam of near-infrared light. This quasi-zero-average-index metamaterial fully preserves the beam spot size throughout the sample for a light beam traveling through the metamaterial a distance of 2 mm—more than 1000 times the input wavelength λ=1.55 μm. These results demonstrate the first explicit experimental verification of optical antimatter as proposed by Pendry and Ramakrishna [ J. Pendry and S. Ramakrishna J. Phys. Condens. Matter 15 6345 (2003)], using two complementary media in which each neff=-1 layer appears to annihilate an equal thickness layer of air.
Self-collimation of light over millimeter-scale distance in a quasi-zero-average-index metamaterial.
MORETTI, Luigi;
2009
Abstract
Inspired by the concept of complementary media, we experimentally demonstrate that an engineered metamaterial made of alternating, stripe layers of negatively refracting (photonic crystals) and positively refracting (air) materials strongly collimates a beam of near-infrared light. This quasi-zero-average-index metamaterial fully preserves the beam spot size throughout the sample for a light beam traveling through the metamaterial a distance of 2 mm—more than 1000 times the input wavelength λ=1.55 μm. These results demonstrate the first explicit experimental verification of optical antimatter as proposed by Pendry and Ramakrishna [ J. Pendry and S. Ramakrishna J. Phys. Condens. Matter 15 6345 (2003)], using two complementary media in which each neff=-1 layer appears to annihilate an equal thickness layer of air.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
