Ca. Moses et N. Engheta, Electromagnetic wave propagation in the wire medium: a complex medium withlong thin inclusions, WAVE MOTION, 34(3), 2001, pp. 301-317
The wire medium is a type of complex artificial material we conceptually en
vision as many identical finite-length, parallel, thin wire inclusions embe
dded within a host medium. It is representative of a class of novel artific
ial materials characterized by long thin inclusions. Unlike some convention
al artificial material, the inclusions of this class are not necessarily el
ectrically short. Here, we present our theoretical analysis for wire media
and by studying certain salient features of plane-wave propagation through
these media, introduce equivalent medium parameters that depend, among othe
r parameters, on the direction of wave propagation. The approach we use sep
arates the artificial material into its elementary planes and then uses per
iodic moment method techniques to individually characterize each elementary
plane. Analytic formulas from periodic structure theory are then used to d
etermine the effective wavenumber for the overall medium and the transverse
impedance at the midpoint between adjacent elementary planes. Our examples
show that some realizations of these media are spatially dispersive and ma
y exhibit interesting features such as "angular windows of propagation" and
other properties that are dependent on the polarization, frequency and dir
ection of wave propagation. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reser
ved.