AbstractsPhysics

The development of electromagnetic metamaterials for perfect lensing and optical cloaking has given rise to novel multilayer bandgap structures using stacks of positive and negative index materials. Gaussian beam propagation through such structures has been analyzed using transfer matrix method (TMM) with paraxial approximation, and unidirectional and bidirectional beam propagation methods (BPMs). In this thesis, TMM is used to analyze non-paraxial propagation of transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) angular plane wave spectra in 1 transverse dimension through a stack containing layers of positive and negative index materials. The TMM calculations are exact, less computationally demanding than finite element methods, and naturally incorporate bidirectional propagation.