Light storage in a cylindrical waveguide with metamaterials

•We propose a cylindrical waveguide with normal core and negative index cladding.•We study the characteristics of power flow in the above waveguide.•We study the mechanism for the storage of light wave in the above waveguide.•Completely stopped light propagation can be reached for storage in the waveguide.•Drude models in microwave and ultraviolet light domains are used for comparison.

This paper studied the mechanism of the light storage in a cylindrical waveguide with core of normal refractive index material and cladding of negative refractive index metamaterial. Light-propagation stopping can be realized due to the cancellation of anti-parallel energy fluxes in the right-handed material and the left-handed metamaterial. Our results show that with appropriate electromagnetic frequency and waveguide core radius, the electromagnetic waves can reach a complete standstill in such a waveguide. Two types of Drude models in microwave domain and optical domain are used in the numerical simulation, respectively.