The role of losses in determining hyperbolic material figures of merit.

ABSTRACT: Uniaxial materials have achieved new prominence in photonics because they can have hyperbolic spectral regions with metallic (ε<0) and dielectric (ε>0) permittivities along different crystal axes. In the lossless case, this results in an open hyperboloid dispersion relation, allowing materials to support highly confined modes with extremely large wavevectors. However, even small losses change the character of the hyperbolic dispersion from open hyperboloids to closed surfaces with finite maximum k, significantly limiting the extent to which highly-confined modes can be achieved. Here, we derive a simple analytic formula for the dispersion relation in the presence of loss and show that for some typical materials the maximum wavevector in hyperbolic materials is roughly ten times the free-sp

SUBMITTER: Jackson EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11502663 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature