Causality in the propagation of transient electromagnetic waves in a left-handed medium

Tie Jun Cui and Jin Au Kong

Phys. Rev. B 70, 165113 – Published 27 October 2004

Abstract

Since the concept of left-handed medium (LHM) was proposed, the causality has been a big concern in the understanding of LHM. Through an exact analysis of a 1D transient current source radiating in a LHM, the causality in the propagation of electromagnetic waves is investigated where three cases are considered for different frequency dispersions in LHM. Numerical experiments have shown that the causality would be violated if the LHM were homogeneous and frequency nondispersive in the whole frequency range or in a certain frequency band. However, such a nondispersive LHM does not exist. For a realistic artificial LHM which is frequency dispersive [Science 292, 77 (2001)], we have shown that the causality is not violated at all.

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Received 20 March 2004

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.70.165113

Authors & Affiliations

Tie Jun Cui^1,2,* and Jin Au Kong^2,3

¹Center for Computational Electromagnetics and State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Department of Radio Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, People’s Republic of China
²Electromagnetics Academy at Zhejiang University, Zhejiang University Yu-Quan, Hangzhou 310027, People’s Republic of China
³Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

^*Email address: tjcui@seu.edu.cn

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Vol. 70, Iss. 16 — 15 October 2004

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Physical Review B

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