Investigation of the Reflective Properties of a Left-Handed Metamaterial

by Durham, Amanda

The purpose of this project is to investigate the reflective properties of a left-handed metamaterial (LHM) through the use of a finite element analysis software called FEMLAB. In the 1960’s, V. Veselago theorized that a material with negative permeability and negative permittivity has a negative index of refraction. In 2000, such a metamaterial was built and demonstrated at microwave frequencies. Previous work had focused on the transmission properties of the metamaterial. In our work, the reflected wave was examined for a LHM subject to an incident transverse electric wave. The different generalizations, first proposed by Veselago, of the Fresnel and Snell’s equations for LHM’s were rederived. We show that the reflectance does not distinguish between normal materials and metamaterials, and, through computational results, that FEMLAB can be used for LHM’s.