Loss monitoring in resonant photon tunneling through metaland dielectric multi-layer metamaterials

摘要

Loss is a critical parameter in metamaterials because it determines the resolution of a super-lens made of meta-materials. The super-lensing effect observed in alternative multi-layer metamaterials consisting of metal and dielectric layers is derived from the resonant photon tunneling (RPT) via surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs). Here we demonstrates that the losses in the metamaterials can be estimated by simultaneous measurements of attenuated total reflection (ATR) and RPT. RPT through silver (Ag)/Si02 metamaterials is studied experimen-tally. A shift of the RPT peak away from the ATR dip is observed; the shift variation in an Ag/SiO_2 system is smaller than that in an aluminum/MgF_2 system. This indicates that the shift is caused by the imaginary part of permittivity, i.e., intrinsic losses, of metamaterials.