Waveguide characteristics for arbitrary permittivity and permeability including for metamaterials

Abstract

We characterize slab and cylindrical waveguides with a dielectric core and a metamaterial cladding (metamaterial-dielectric guide). We use the lossy Drude model to describe the permittivity of the metamaterial and a lossy Lorentz-like model for the permeability. We identify the possible modes and examine various related quantities, such as dispersion and attenuation, for metamaterial-dielectric waveguides. We find that at certain frequencies the modes of the metamaterial-dielectric guides differ from metal-dielectric or dielectricdielectric guides. Our results also point to the possibility of having a metamaterial-dielectric waveguide with lower loss than a metal-dielectric waveguide.