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Wave propagation control at the deep subwavelength scale in metamaterials

Nature Physics volume 9, pages 55–60 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

The ability to control wave propagation is of fundamental interest in many areas of physics. Photonic crystals proved very useful for this purpose but, because they are based on Bragg interferences, these artificial media require structures with large dimensions. Metamaterials, on the other hand, can exhibit very deep subwavelength spatial scales. In general they are studied for their bulk effective properties that lead to effects such as negative refraction. Here we go beyond this effective medium paradigm and we use a microscopic approach to study metamaterials based on resonant unit cells. We show that we can tailor unit cells locally to shape the flow of waves at deep subwavelength scales. We validate our approach in experiments with both electromagnetic and acoustic waves in the metre range demonstrating cavities, waveguides, corners and splitters with centimetre-scale dimensions, an order of magnitude smaller than previous proposals.

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Figure 1: Probing the electromagnetic metamaterial.
Figure 2: Moulding the flow of electromagnetic waves at the deep subwavelength scale.
Figure 3: Probing the acoustic metamaterial.
Figure 4: Moulding the flow of acoustic waves at the deep subwavelength scale.

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Acknowledgements

F.L. acknowledges financial support from the French ‘Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA)’.

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Author notes

  1. Fabrice Lemoult and Nadège Kaina: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut Langevin, ESPCI ParisTech & CNRS UMR 7587, 1 rue Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France

    Fabrice Lemoult, Nadège Kaina, Mathias Fink & Geoffroy Lerosey

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  1. Fabrice Lemoult
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  2. Nadège Kaina
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  3. Mathias Fink
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  4. Geoffroy Lerosey
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Contributions

G.L. initiated and supervised the project. G.L. and F.L. conceived the theory and the experiments. G.L., F.L. and N.K. performed and analysed the experiments. All authors discussed the results and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Geoffroy Lerosey.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Lemoult, F., Kaina, N., Fink, M. et al. Wave propagation control at the deep subwavelength scale in metamaterials. Nature Phys 9, 55–60 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2480

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