Interface Design of Hyperbolic Metamaterials for Tunable Scattering

Abstract

An interface between media plays a critical role in controlling the flow of elementary particles, by introducing the violated continuity of particle flows. In optics, the efficient change of wavevectors through interfaces has been the foundation of optical elements, such as mirrors, lens, and waveguides.

Overcoming the previous belief that the interface should be composed between different media, the recently proposal of metasurfaces which can be made in-between identical materials generates strong scattering of waves through the discontinuity in amplitude and phase across the surfaces. However, in spite of their name of meta-surface, they are composed of elements with finite thickness to increase the scattering. The benefits of a single interface have thus not been fully exploited in existing metasurfaces.

In this thesis, we investigate an artificial interface between identical metamaterials. From both analytic and numerical analysis, we verify that a dislocated interface between identical hyperbolic metamaterials can provide the full range of transmission phase shift with unity transmittance, including the regime of phase reversal. By exploiting the advantages of zero-thickness phase control, various platforms based on the dislocated interfaces are proposed for applications on controlling wave propagation in hyperbolic metamaterials.