Extraordinary refraction and self-collimation properties of multilayer metallic-dielectric stratified structures

The extraordinary refraction with negative or zero refraction angle of the layered metamaterial consisting of alternating dielectric and plasmonic layers is theoretically studied. It is shown that the electromagnetic properties can be tuned by the filling factor, the permittivity of the dielectric layer and the plasma frequency of the metallic layer. At different frequency, the layered structures possess different refraction properties with positive, zero or negative refraction angle. By choosing appropriate parameters, positive-to-zero-to-negative-to positive refraction at the desired frequency can be realized. At the frequency with flat equal frequency contour, self-collimation and slow light properties are also found. Such properties can be used in the performance of negative refraction, subwavelength imaging and information propagation.