Focusing slabs made of negative index materials based on inhomogeneous dielectric rods

Abstract

We show the advantages of using inhomogeneous dielectric rods to design photonic crystals that behave as materials with negative refractive index. We found that the analysis of light scattering properties of inhomogeneous dielectric rods allows one to estimate the interval of frequencies where a photonic crystal exhibits negative refractive index. A triangular-lattice photonic crystal – assembled from multilayer dielectric rods designed to approximate a fish-eye profile – is shown to exhibit negative refractive index and good focusing properties at frequencies where the fish-eye dielectric rods scatter the light like a medium with negative refractive index.