Presence Of Left-Handedness And Negative Refraction In Antiferromagnetic/Ionic-Crystal Multilayered Films

We present a simple structure of multilayered film that possesses left-handedness-like and negative refraction at infrared frequencies. It periodically consists of antiferromagnetic (AF) and ionic-crystal (IC) layers, where IC material has a transverse optical phonon frequency near and below the AF resonant frequency. We calculated the angle between the energy flow and wave vector of a plane wave in the film and its refraction angle, and found an analytical condition under which both left-handedness and negative refraction appear in the multilayered film, and the negative refraction phenomenon disappears when AF layers are thinner than IC. Numerical simulation results verify these analytical findings. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3224963]