Electromagnetic wave propagation in the wire medium: a complex medium withlong thin inclusions

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.