Wave propagation in periodic structures and negative refraction mechanisms

Basic data for this project

Description

Three mechanisms are known to produce negative refraction. All of themare experimentally confirmed, numerical studies have been performed,and some analytical explanations on the basis of either homogenizationmethods or Bloch-wave analysis are available in the literature. Thefirst (and by now classical) method involves negative indexmetamaterials (which can, in turn, be contructed using a photoniccrystal). In this first approach, the size of the periodic structureis small compared to the wave-length. A second method relies on aninteraction of a wave with a photonic crystal (wave-length andperiodicity length are comparable). A third approach uses surfacecorrugations (at the length-scale of the wave). Our aim is to deriveanalytical and numerical methods to investigate the negativerefraction effect, to provide effective models and efficient numericalschemes.