Dependence of dispersion on metamaterial structural parameters and dispersion management

Abstract

This paper compares the dispersion in metamaterials (MMs) and some Thorlabs' conventional glass, and finds that MMs may exhibit much more substantial dispersion (e.g., three orders of magnitude larger dispersion). With such large dispersion, a transmission more than 22 km is impossible because of pulse splitting resulting from the third-order dispersion. However, MMs are artificial materials with their electric and magnetic plasma frequencies tunable depending upon their structures. We take advantage of such tunability to tailor the dispersive response of MMs and investigate the dependence of dispersion on the MM structural parameters. We make dispersion management by (1) searching for the existence of some 'good' dispersion points and numerically demonstrating 90 km long transmission with almost no pulse width expansion and any impact from a higher order dispersion in the MM we designed; and (2) searching for the possibility for group-velocity dispersion (GVD) compensation and demonstrating 120 km transmission by configuring the dispersion-engineered MM.