Layered superconductors as negative-refractive-index metamaterials

Abstract

We analyze the use of layered superconductors as strongly anisotropic metamaterials, which can possess negative-refractive-index in a wide frequency range. Superconductors are of particular interest because they have the potential to support low losses, which is critical for applications such as super-resolution imaging. We show that low- Tc (s -wave) superconductors can be used to construct layered heterostructures with low losses for T Tc. However, the real part of their in-plane effective permittivity is very large, making coupling into the structure difficult. Moreover, even at low temperatures, layered high- Tc superconductors have a large in-plane normal conductivity, producing large losses (due to d -wave symmetry). Therefore, it is difficult to enhance the evanescent modes in either low- Tc or high- Tc superconductors. © 2010 The American Physical Society.