Taming electromagnetic metamaterials for isotropic perfect absorbers

Conventional metamaterial absorbers, which consist of a dielectric spacer sandwiched between metamaterial resonators and a metallic ground plane, have been inherently anisotropic. In this paper, we present an alternative approach for isotropic perfect absorbers using symmetric metamaterial structures. We show that by systematically manipulating the electrically and magnetically induced losses, one can achieve a desired absorption without breaking the structural homogeneity. Finite integration simulations and standard retrieval method are performed to elaborate on our idea.