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This paper introduces a 3-D spherical spiral expansion of the split ring resonator (SRR) commonly used to achieve negative permeability. The spherical spiral unit cell is shown to produce negative permeability over a much wider bandwidth than the traditional SRRs, and also to be capable of producing wideband negative permittivity or a double-negative response, depending on the orientation of the unit cell with respect to the incident electric field. The current structures leading to this phenomenon are discussed. Simulated and measured results are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Backward-wave (BW) materials that have simultaneously negative real parts of their electric permittivity and magnetic permeability can support waves where phase and power propagation occur in opposite directions. These materials were predicted to have many unusual electromagnetic properties, among them amplification of the near-field of a point source, which could lead to the perfect reconstruction of the source field in an image [J. Pendry, Phys. Rev. Left. vol. 85, pg. 3966, 2000]. Often systems containing BW materials are simulated using the finite-difference time-domain technique. We show that this technique suffers from a numerical artifact due to its staggered grid that makes its use in simulations involving BW materials problematic. The pseudospectral time-domain technique, on the other hand, uses a collocated grid and is free of this artifact It is also shown that when modeling the dispersive BW material, the linear frequency approximation method introduces error that affects the frequency of vanishing reflection, while the auxiliary differential equation, the Z-transform, and the bilinear frequency approximation method produce vanishing reflection at the correct frequency. The case of vanishing reflection is of particular interest for field reconstruction in imaging applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here, we analyze the transverse-magnetic (TM) wave interaction with a pair of slabs, one being an epsilon-negative (ENG) layer in which the real part of permittivity is assumed to be negative while its permeability has positive real part, and the other being a mu-negative (MNG) layer that has the real part of its permeability negative but its permittivity has positive real part. Although wave interaction with each slab by itself has predictable features, we show that the juxtaposition and pairing of such ENG and MNG slabs may, under certain conditions, lead to some unusual features, such as resonance, complete tunneling, zero reflection and transparency. The field distributions inside and outside such paired slabs are analyzed, and the Poynting vector distributions in such structures are studied. Using equivalent transmission-line models, we obtain the conditions for the resonance, complete tunneling and transparency, and we justify and explain the field behavior in these resonant paired structures. Salient features of the tunneling conditions, such as the roles of material parameters, slab thicknesses, dissipation, and angle of incidence are discussed. The analogy and correspondence between the ENG-MNG pair and the pair of a slab of conventional material juxtaposed with a "double-negative" medium is also discussed. Finally, a conceptual idea for a potential application of such a "matched" lossless ENG-MNG pair in "ideal" image displacement and image reconstruction is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]