Spectrum of Cherenkov radiation in dispersive metamaterials with negative refraction index

Abstract

We numerically studied the spectrum of Cherenkov optical radiation by a nonrelativistic anisotropic electron bunch crossing 3D dispersive metamaterial. A practically important case when such a medium is described by Drude model is investigated in details. In our theory only parameters of a metamaterial are fixed. The frequency spectrum of internal excitations is left to be defined as a result of the numerical simulation. It is found that a periodic field structure coupled to plasmonic excitations is arisen when the dispersive refractive index of a metamaterial becomes negative. In this case the reversed Cherenkov radiation is observed.