Excitation of surface plasmons in multilayer structures containing alternate ε-negative and the μ-negative metamaterials

摘要

The localized surface waves at the interface between a semi-infinite periodic multilayer structure containing alternate e-negative (ENG) and the u-negative (MNG) layers and a uniform right-handed material and also a uniform left-handed metamaterial have been investigated. We demonstrated that in the presence of uniform right-handed materials, this system can support TE and TM-polarized surface waves depending on the relative thicknesses of the ENG and the MNG layers. But, in the presence of uniform left-handed metamaterials, the supposed structure only support TM-polarized surface waves. These localized modes can have two different transverse structure related to the order of the ENG and the MNG layers; one with a hump at the interface between uniform material and the cap layer and the other one with a hump at the interface between the cap layer and the periodic multilayer structure.