Trapped Rainbow Storage of Light in Metamaterials

Abstract:

We review recent theoretical and experimental breakthroughs in the realm of slow and stopped light in structured photonic media featuring negative electromagnetic parameters (permittivity/permeability and/or refractive index). We explain how and why these structures can enable complete stopping of light even in the presence of disorder and, simultaneously, dissipative losses. Using full-wave numerical simulations we show that the incorporation of thin layers made of an active medium adjacently to the core layer of a negative-refractive-index waveguide can completely remove dissipative losses – in a slow-light regime where the effective index of the guided wave is negative.

• Periodical: Advances in Science and Technology (Volume 75)
• Pages: 256-265
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AST.75.256
• Online since: October 2010
• Authors: Ortwin Hess, Kosmas L. Tsakmakidis
• Keywords: Adiabatic Variation, Metamaterial, Negative Refractive Index, Plasmonics, Slow Light, Waveguide

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