Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
1866437 | Physics Letters A | 2007 | 4 Pages |
We consider layered heterostructures combining ordinary positive index materials and dispersive metamaterials. We show that these structures can exhibit a new type of photonic gap around frequencies where either the magnetic permeability μ or the electric permittivity ϵ of the metamaterial is zero. Although the interface of a semi-infinite medium with zero refractive index (a condition attained either when μ=0μ=0 or when ϵ=0ϵ=0) is known to give full reflectivity for all incident polarizations, here we show that a gap corresponding to μ=0μ=0 occurs only for TE polarized waves, whereas a gap corresponding to ϵ=0ϵ=0 occurs only for TM polarized waves. These band gaps are scale-length invariant and very robust against disorder, although they may disappear for the particular case of propagation along the stratification direction.