1. Introduction
Negative refraction realized by left-handed materials, or metamaterials, has attracted a great deal of technological attention [
1
V. G. Veselago, “Electrodynamics of substances with simultaneously negative values of sigma and mu,” Sov. Phys. Usp.
10, 509–514 (1968). [CrossRef]
–
7
S. A. Ramakrishna and T. M. Grzegorczyk, Physics and Applications of Negative Refractive Index Materials (SPIE Press, 2008). [CrossRef]
]. As a particular application, a microwave steerable antenna based on negative refraction was proposed and demonstrated [
8
S. Matsuzawa, K. Sato, Y. Inoue, and T. Nomura, “W-band steerable composite right/left-handed leaky wave antenna for automotive applications,” IEICE Trans. Electron.
E89-C, 1337–1344 (2006). [CrossRef]
–
10
C. Caloz and T. Ito, “Application of the transmission line theory of left-handed (LH) materials to the realization of a microstrip LH line,” IEEE-AP-S Int. Symp. Dig.
2, 412–415 (2002).
]. Microwave antennas of this kind are important, since they may be used for automotive radar sensors for adaptive cruise control and pre-crash safety systems [
11
S. Tokoro, K. Kuroda, A. Kawakubo, K. Fujita, and H. Fujinami, “Electronically scanned millimeter-wave radar for pre-crush safety and adaptive cruise control system,” Proc. IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symp. , 304–309 (2003).
]. In this paper, we present an analytical method to investigate the properties of dispersion curves relevant to the problem of the steerable antenna based on the group-theoretical treatment of the electromagnetic transfer integral that appear in the tight-binding approximation.
The idea of steerable antennas is illustrated in
Fig. 1. We assume that an incident wave with angular frequency
ωi
is propagated into a one- or two-dimensional regular array of metallic unit structures that have two dispersion curves in the relevant frequency range. Two important characters for beam steerability are (1) the upper dispersion curve is concave-up and the lower one is concave-down and (2) the two curves touch each other on the Γ point of the Brillouin zone. Then, the incident wave excites an internal eigenmode with a positive group velocity (measured in the direction of incidence). If the frequency of the internal eigenmode is located between
ωu
and
ωl
, or above the light lines (see
Fig. 1), the incident wave is diffracted at a diffraction angle
θ that is determind by
ωi
and the wave vector of the internal mode
ki
:
which is measured from the direction of incidence. So, when
ωi
is decreased from
ωu
to
ωl
,
θ changes from 0 to 180 degrees. In particular, if
ki
is negative, which takes place when
ωi
is in the frequency range of the lower dispersion curve, negative diffraction occurs.

Fig. 1 Conceptual dispersion curves of a metamaterial steerable antenna. The vertical axis is the angular frequency ω of the electromagnetic field normalized by the light velocity in free space c and the lattice constant of the regular array of unit structures a. The horizontal axis is the wave vector in the first Brillouin zone. The dispersion consists of two curves: The upper one denoted by fu
is concave-up and the lower one denoted by fl
is concave-down. They touch each other on the Γ point (k = 0), which can be realized by accidental degeneracy of eigen frequencies due to appropriate combination of device parameters or by deterministic degeneracy caused by spatial symmetry of device structure. When an incident wave with angular frequency ωi
is propagated in the positive k direction, it excites an eigenmode (denoted by wave vector ki
) with a positive group velocity, which is given by ∂ω/∂k. So, only eigenmodes on dispersion branches with positive slopes denoted by the blue color are excited. If the angular frequency of the excited mode is located above the light lines, which are given by ω = ±ck, the incident wave is leaky and diffracted in the direction determined by ωi
and ki
. Thus, the upper and lower limits of working frequency are given by ωu
and ωl
. Reproduced with permission from Opt. Express 18, 27371 (2010). Copyright 2010 The Optical Society (OSA).
The degeneracy of eigen frequencies on the Γ point can be realized by two ways: accidental degeneracy due to appropriate combination of device parameters, and deterministic degeneracy due to spatial symmetry of the device structure.
The former case for a one-dimensional regular array of metallic unit structures was examined using tight-binding approximation in our recent paper [
12
K. Sakoda and H.-F. Zhou, “Role of structural electromagnetic resonances in a steerable left-handed antenna,” Opt. Express
18, 27371–27386 (2010). [CrossRef]
]. It was found that (1) the tight-binding picture, which is based on the localized nature of electromagnetic resonance states of the single unit structure, gives a qualitatively correct description of the metamaterial steerable antenna, (2) the sign of the slope of the dispersion curves around the Γ point depends on the spatial symmetry of the resonance states, (3) when the symmetry of the resonance states satisfies certain conditions, the two dispersion curves are linear and have finite slopes in the vicinity of the Γ point, and (4) otherwise they are quadratic in
k.
Since item (3) is a main motivation of and closely related to the present study, let us describe it in some detail here. In Ref. [
12
K. Sakoda and H.-F. Zhou, “Role of structural electromagnetic resonances in a steerable left-handed antenna,” Opt. Express
18, 27371–27386 (2010). [CrossRef]
], we examined a one-dimensional regular array of metallic unit structures of the
C
2v
(rectangular) symmetry, which were fabricated on a dielectric plate [
8
S. Matsuzawa, K. Sato, Y. Inoue, and T. Nomura, “W-band steerable composite right/left-handed leaky wave antenna for automotive applications,” IEICE Trans. Electron.
E89-C, 1337–1344 (2006). [CrossRef]
]. As a result, electromagnetic resonance states localized on a unit structure were characterized by two inplane parities (
σx
and
σy
). Because the total system also had the
C
2v
symmetry, we could show that eigenmodes on the Γ point are also characterized by these two parities, which are shown in
Table 1. Note that we only have one-dimensional representations because of low symmetry of the
C
2v
point group, that is, all eigenmodes on the Γ point are non-degenerate. Their degeneracy can only be brought about by accidental degeneracy due to appropriate combination of device parameters. In the case of non-degeneracy, combined with a general property of
which is derived from time-reversal symmetry of Maxwell’s wave equation in the absence of static magnetic field, we could conclude that dispersion curves were quadratic in
k and their slopes were vanishing on the Γ point.
Table 1 Parity of Eigenmodes on the Γ Point for a Regular Array of Metallic Unit Structure of the C
2v
Symmetry
| Symmetry |
σx
|
σy
|
|---|
|
A
1
| 1 | 1 |
|
A
2
| −1 | −1 |
|
B
1
| −1 | 1 |
|
B
2
| 1 | −1 |
On the other hand, there are two cases for accidental degeneracy. In the first case, which is given by combinations of {
A
1,
B
1} or {
A
2,
B
2} symmetries where the two modes in the braces have the same
σy
parity, dispersion curves are linear in
k and have the slopes of the same magnitude but with different signs in the vicinity of the Γ point. Dispersion curves of this case are illustrated in
Fig. 2. In the second case, which is given by combinations of {
A
1,
A
2} or {
B
1,
B
2} symmetries where the two modes in the braces have different
σy
parities, the dispersion curves are quadratic in
k and have vanishing slopes around the Γ point as was shown previously in
Fig. 1.
Fig. 2 Illustration of dispersion curves in the case of accidental degeneracy, which can be realized by A
1 and B
1 modes, or by A
2 and B
2 modes on the Γ point of one-dimensional metamaterial steerable antennas composed of regular arrays of unit structures of the C
2v
symmetry.
In the second case with vanishing slope on the Γ point, diffraction angle
θ varies rapidly with incidence frequency
ωi
, which can be easily understood from a rapid variation of
ki
with
ωi
. This rapid variation results in a bad tunability of the diffraction angle, which is an undesirable feature of steerable antennas. On the other hand, if the slopes of the two dispersion curves are finite and have the same magnitude on the Γ point as shown in
Fig. 2, variation of
θ with
ωi
is more constant, which results in a better tunability. Therefore, realization of linear dispersion has been one of the main issues of metamaterial steerable antennas.
In the microwave region, the design of metamaterial antennas has a large capability, so it might not be too difficult to adjust the device structure. However, in the optical frequencies, the size of the unit structure is less than 1 μm, so that the antennas have to be fabricated by sophisticated lithographical methods like FIB (focused ion beam) milling and EB (electron beam) lithography. In this case, it may be difficult to adjust the device structure to achieve accidental degeneracy.
Thus in this paper, we examine the possibility of using deterministic degeneracy due to structural symmetry. Then we propose a method of controlled symmetry reduction, which is easier to achieve because the original two frequencies are degenerate, so the amount of frequency tuning is small, and it may be attained by electro-optic effect, for example.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we formulate the tight-binding approximation for two-dimensional regular arrays of metallic unit structures by fully using the localized nature and spatial symmetry of electromagnetic resonance states. We derive dispersion curves and discuss their behavior in the vicinity of the Γ point. As particular applications of the tight-binding formulation, we examine square and triangular lattices. In Section 3, we give some numerical results of the resonance states and dispersion curves to graphically illustrate the qualitative description given in Section 2. In Section 4, we describe the idea of controlled symmetry reduction and show how linear
k dependence is realized. A brief summary is given in Section 5. Massive calculations on mutual relations among electromagnetic transfer integrals,
, are given in
Appendex A to
Appendix D.
2. Tight-binding calculation
As we mentioned in Section 1, we deal with two-dimensional regular arrays of metallic unit structures and calculate their electromagnetic dispersion curves. In this section, we present them by analytical calculation based on the tight-binding approximation, and discuss their properties qualitatively.
The wave equation for the magnetic field
H(
r,
t) is given by
where
ɛ(
r) is the position-dependent dielectric constant of the system and
c is the light velocity in free space. The magnetic permeability was assumed to be unity, since we do not deal with magnetic materials. We impose the periodic boundary condition on
H to make our problem well-defined [
13
K. Sakoda, Optical Properties of Photonic Crystals , 2nd Ed. (Springer-Verlag, 2004).
] and assume, as an approximation to extract basic features of our problem, that
ɛ(
r) is real. Thus,
Eq. (3) leads to eigen value problems.
For a single unit structure described by dielectric constant
ɛs
(
r), we assume a doubly degenerate resonant state due to the geometrical symmetry of the unit structure, and denote its two magnetic field distributions by
and
. This situation can be realized by eigenmodes of the
E symmetry of the
C
4v
point group and those of the
E
1 and
E
2 symmetries of the
C
6v
point group, as we describe in detail later. Thus, the two distributions satisfy the following eigen value equation:
where
ω
0 is the resonance angular frequency. Without loss of generality, we can assume that the two distributions are normalized as follows:
where
V is the volume on which we impose the periodic boundary condition. Note that
(
i = 1, 2) is dimensionless by this definition.
For the regular array of metallic unit structures, the magnetic field is described by a Bloch function due to the periodicity of the system. If there is no other resonance state in the vicinity of
ω
0, we can assume in the tight-binding picture that the Bloch wave function is a linear combination of
and
:
where
k is the wave vector in the first Brillouin zone,
N is the number of unit structures in volume
V, and
r
nm
is the lattice vector.
n and
m are integers to denote the two-dimensional lattice points.
Since we are interested in the case that the two bands are naturally degenerate on the Γ point of the Brillouin zone, we deal with regular metallic arrays of the C
4v
and C
6v
symmetries in the following, since these two symmetries allow the symmetry-induced degeneracy.
2.1. Square lattice
First, we examine the
C
4v
symmetry whose symmetry operations are illustrated in
Fig. 3. They consist of identity operation (
E), rotation by 90 degrees (
C
4,
), rotation by 180 degrees (
C
2), basic mirror reflection (
σx
,
σy
), and diagonal mirror reflection (
σ′d
,
σ″d
).
Fig. 3 Symmetry operations of the C
4v
group. There are two sets of two equivalent mirror reflections, which are denoted by (σx
, σy
) and (σ′d
, σ″d
). Lattice points are denoted by solid circles.
If the unit structure also has the symmetry of a regular square, or the
C
4v
symmetry, the whole system of the square lattice has the
C
4v
symmetry. Then, the Bloch states on the Γ point are classified into four one-dimensional representations (
A
1,
A
2,
B
1, and
B
2) and one two-dimensional representation (
E). The first four are non-degenerate, while the last is doubly degenerate. Their characters are listed in
Table 2. In the rest of this section, we only consider the
E mode.
Table 2 Character Table of the C
4v
Point Group
|
C
4v
|
E
| 2C
4
|
C
2
| 2σv
| 2σd
|
|---|
|
A
1
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
|
A
2
| 1 | 1 | 1 | −1 | −1 |
|
B
1
| 1 | −1 | 1 | 1 | −1 |
|
B
2
| 1 | −1 | 1 | −1 | 1 |
|
E
| 2 | 0 | −2 | 0 | 0 |
In the case of a regular square lattice, the lattice vectors are given by
Here,
a
1 and
a
2 are elementary lattice vectors of the square lattice:
Note that
Hk
(
r) given by
Eq. (6) satisfies the Bloch condition:
Now, we assume according to the prescription of the tight-binding approximation that
Hk
(
r) is an eigen function of
Eq. (3) and we denote its eigen angular frequency by
ωk
. Thus it satisfies the following equation:
where we introduced a differential operator
ℒ:
Multiplying
Eq. (10) by
and integrating over
V, we obtain
where
is defined as
It is known from group theory that the two eigen functions of the
E mode can be assumed to transform like the two coordinates,
x and
y, when any symmetry operation
R ∈
C
4v
is applied [
14
T. Inui, Y. Tanabe, and Y. Onodera, Group Theory and its Applications in Physics (Springer, 1990). [CrossRef]
]. Using this property, we can derive various relations among
’s. Details of the calculations are given in
Appendix A. As a result, we can prove that there are only five independent elements among 36 integrals for the origin ((
n,
m) = (0, 0)), the nearest neighbor ((
n,
m) = (±1, 0), (0, ±1)), and the second nearest neighbor ((
n,
m) = (±1, ±1)) lattice points in
Eq. (13):
Because essential features of dispersion curves, especially those around the Γ point, can be described well with a small number of
n and
m in
Eq. (6), we only consider contributions from these lattice points in the following.
As for the contribution from the right-hand side of
Eq. (10), we only keep its most dominant term,
. Thus, we obtain
Similarly, multiplying
Eq. (10) by
and integrating over volume
V, we obtain
By solving the secular equation derived from
Eqs. (21) and
(22), we finally obtain the following dispersion relation:
Let us examine some special cases. First, for the Γ point (
kx
=
ky
= 0), we have a doubly degenerate eigen frequency
ω
Γ:
Secondly,
Eq. (23) is invariant when we exchange
kx
with
ky
, as it should be, which is a consequence of the
C
4v
symmetry of the square lattice. Thirdly, it has a property
which is a consequence of the time-reversal symmetry of the wave equation [
13
K. Sakoda, Optical Properties of Photonic Crystals , 2nd Ed. (Springer-Verlag, 2004).
].
Next, let us examine the dispersion in the vicinity of the Γ point. For this purpose, we assume that |
kxa|, |
kya| ≪ 1 and keep the lowest order terms. Then, from
Eq. (23), we obtain
where
So, the dispersion curves have a quadratic dependence on the wave vector in the vicinity of the Γ point. Their effective mass, which is inversely proportional to the second-order derivative of
ω
k
with respect to the wave vector, is periodic in ϕ with a period of
π/2.
Finally, let us comment on the influence of truncation of contributions up to terms from the second-nearest neighbors in
Eqs. (21) and
(22). Those contributions from the third-nearest and farther lattice points give higher order terms with respect to
kx
and
ky
. So, as far as the behavior of dispersion curves in the vicinity of the Γ point is concerned, they do not bring about a qualitative change.
2.2. Triangular lattice
In this section, we examine the triangular lattice with the
C
6v
symmetry whose symmetry operations are illustrated in
Fig. 4. They consist of identity operation (
E), rotation by 60 degrees (
C
6,
), rotation by 120 degrees (
C
3 and
), rotation by 180 degrees (
C
2), and two sets of three equivalent mirror reflections ((
σx
,
σ′x
,
σ″x
) and (
σy
,
σ′y
,
σ″y
)).
Fig. 4 Symmetry operations of the C
6v
group. There are two sets of three equivalent mirror reflections that are denoted by (σx
, σ′x
, σ″x
) and (σy
, σ′y
, σ″y
). Seven lattice points (the origin and its nearest neighbors) are denoted by integers from 0 to 6.
If the unit structure also has the symmetry of a regular hexagon, or the
C
6v
symmetry, the whole system of the triangular lattice has the
C
6v
symmetry. Then, the Bloch states on the Γ point are classified into four one-dimensional representations (
A
1,
A
2,
B
1, and
B
2) and two two-dimensional representations (
E
1 and
E
2) [
14
T. Inui, Y. Tanabe, and Y. Onodera, Group Theory and its Applications in Physics (Springer, 1990). [CrossRef]
]. The former four are non-degenerate and the latter two are doubly degenerate. Their characters are listed in
Table 3. In the rest of this section, we only consider the
E
1 and
E
2 modes.
Table 3 Character Table of the C
6v
Point Group
|
C
6v
|
E
| 2C
6
| 2C
3
|
C
2
| 3σy
| 3σx
|
|---|
|
A
1
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
|
A
2
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | −1 | −1 |
|
B
1
| 1 | −1 | 1 | −1 | 1 | −1 |
|
B
2
| 1 | −1 | 1 | −1 | −1 | 1 |
|
E
1
| 2 | 1 | −1 | −2 | 0 | 0 |
|
E
2
| 2 | −1 | −1 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
In the case of the regular triangular lattice, the elementary lattice vectors are given by
Then, we can write down the Bloch function as before. By similar calculations as in the previous section, we can derive a secular equation to determine the dispersion relation. It is sufficient to take into consideration terms up to the nearest neighbor lattice points in the calculation of
in order to obtain the same accuracy as
Eq. (23). Thus, it is convenient to label the origin and the nearest neighbors by integers from 0 to 6 as shown in
Fig. 4.
By fully using the symmetry properties of the eigen functions, we can derive the following relations (see
Appendix B):
We can further prove the following relations:
So, the number of independent elements among the 28
’s is three. The dispersion relation is given by
The dispersion curves give a degenerate eigen frequency on the Γ point:
For small
k,
Eq. (42) is approximated as
where
So, the dispersion curves are isotropic in the vicinity of the Γ point, and they are quadratic in
k.
3. Numerical results
We calculated the field distribution of structural electromagnetic resonances of metallic unit structures and dispersion relations of their periodic arrays by the FDTD (finite-difference time-domain) method [
15
A. Taflove, Computational Electrodynamics (Artech House, 1995).
,
16
D. M. Sullivan, Electromagnetic Simulation Using the FDTD Method (IEEE Press, 2000). [CrossRef]
]. The details of the method of calculation are described in Ref. [
12
K. Sakoda and H.-F. Zhou, “Role of structural electromagnetic resonances in a steerable left-handed antenna,” Opt. Express
18, 27371–27386 (2010). [CrossRef]
]. In the present study, we assumed two metallic unit structures of the square and hexagonal symmetries as shown in
Fig. 5 to graphically illustrate our analytical calculation presented in the previous sections. According to the antenna design demonstrated in Ref. [
8
S. Matsuzawa, K. Sato, Y. Inoue, and T. Nomura, “W-band steerable composite right/left-handed leaky wave antenna for automotive applications,” IEICE Trans. Electron.
E89-C, 1337–1344 (2006). [CrossRef]
], these structures were assumed to be fabricated on a dielectric slab with a ground electrode on the back surface. Since the antenna was originally designed to operate in a microwave frequency around 76 GHz (freespace wavelength = 3.95 mm), the size of the unit structures was chosen as of the order of 1 mm. To calculate the dispersion relation, regular square and triangular arrays of the unit structures were assumed.
Fig. 5 Illustration of metallic unit structures of (a) square and (b) hexagonal symmetries. These unit structures were assumed to be fabricated on a dielectric slab with a ground electrode on its back surface. Based on the device design of Ref. [
8
S. Matsuzawa, K. Sato, Y. Inoue, and T. Nomura, “W-band steerable composite right/left-handed leaky wave antenna for automotive applications,” IEICE Trans. Electron.
E89-C, 1337–1344 (2006). [CrossRef]
], the dielectric constant and thickness of the slab were assumed to be 2.2 and 0.127 mm, respectively. For calculating the dispersion relation, (c) a periodic square array of the unit structure shown in (a) was assumed, whose lattice constant
a was 0.6 mm.
Figure 6 shows distributions of the
z component of the magnetic field,
Hz
, of resonance states. The resonance states were identified by finding peaks (resonance frequencies) in the Fourier transform of temporal variation of the electromagnetic field after pulsed excitation, whereas their field distributions were obtained by CW (continuous wave) excitation at the resonance frequencies [
12
K. Sakoda and H.-F. Zhou, “Role of structural electromagnetic resonances in a steerable left-handed antenna,” Opt. Express
18, 27371–27386 (2010). [CrossRef]
].
Fig. 6 Distribution of Hz
of resonance states of a unit structure. (a), (b) E mode at 158 GHz, (c), (d) E
1 mode at 177 GHz, and (e), (f) E
2 mode at 295 GHz. Hz
on the horizontal plane in the middle of the dielectric slab is shown.
Figures 6(a) and 6(b) show two distributions of an
E mode found at 158 GHz for the unit structure of the square symmetry given in
Fig. 5(a). These two distributions were obtained by imposing the following boundary conditions on the electromagnetic field according to the symmetry of corresponding polynomial representations of the
E mode given in
Appendix A: (
σx
,
σy
) = (−1, 1) for (a) and (1, −1) for (b). As is apparent, one distribution is obtained by rotating the other by 90 degrees.
Figures 6(c) and 6(d) show the distributions of an
E
1 mode found at 177 GHz for the unit structure of the hexagonal symmetry given in
Fig. 5(b). In this case, we imposed the same boundary conditions as the
E mode according to the symmetry of the polynomial representations of the
E
1 mode given in
Appendix B. Note that one distribution is
not obtained by rotating the other for this case. Finally,
Figs. 6(e) and 6(f) are the distributions of an
E
2 mode found at 295 GHz. To obtain these distributions, we imposed the following boundary conditions according to the symmetry of the polynomial representations of the
E
2 mode given in
Appendix C: (
σx
,
σy
) = (−1, −1) for (e) and (1, 1) for (f).
Let us make three comments about
Fig. 6 here. First, the dominant component among the three electric field components is
Ez
, which is perpendicular to the surface of the metallic unit structure, because the tangential components (
Ex
and
Ey
) are small due to their continuity across the surface and the small electric field inside the metal caused by the large conductivity. So, the electromagnetic field has mostly a TM (transverse magnetic) character, and therefore,
Hz
is small. Nevertheless, we plotted
Hz
in
Fig. 6 in order to provide a graphic description consistent with the analytical calculations given in Section 2.
Second, the symmetry of the electric field is generally different from that of the magnetic field [
13
K. Sakoda, Optical Properties of Photonic Crystals , 2nd Ed. (Springer-Verlag, 2004).
]. When we denote their characters for symmetry operation
R by
χ
(E)(
R) and
χ
(H)(
R), respectively, then
where det
R is the determinant of the transformation matrix for
R. det
R is equal to 1 for proper transformations like rotations and is equal to −1 for improper transformations like mirror reflections. This difference should be treated appropriately when we impose symmetric and antisymmetric boundary conditions on the electromagnetic field to extract resonances and field distributions of particular symmetries.
Thirdly, the resonance frequencies of the
E,
E
1, and
E
2 modes shown in
Fig. 6 are considerably larger than those values obtained by our previous analysis of a similar structure [
12
K. Sakoda and H.-F. Zhou, “Role of structural electromagnetic resonances in a steerable left-handed antenna,” Opt. Express
18, 27371–27386 (2010). [CrossRef]
], since the unit structures are smaller in the present analysis. We chose these sizes to have the same lattice constant, 0.6 mm, as before. Because the resonance frequency is inversely proportional to the device size, we may choose a larger lattice constant and device size if we need smaller frequencies.
Next, let us examine the dispersion curves. As an example,
Fig. 7 shows the dispersion curves of the regular square array of unit structures illustrated in
Fig. 5(c). Among the four modes identified by numerical calculations, two modes originate from the
E resonance state shown in
Figs. 6(a) and 6(b). They are degenerate on the Γ point as we expected. Their dispersion is consistent with the quadratic dependence on the wave vector in the vicinity of the Γ point, which was predicted by the tight-binding calculation in Section 2.1. In addition to these modes, we also have one mode originating from a non-degenerate
B
2 resonance state and another mode that has a character of the lowest TM mode of the dielectric slab, whose original dispersion curve is located very close to the light line given by
ω =
ck.
Fig. 7 Dispersion curves of the regular square array of unit structures illustrated in
Fig. 5(c). In the analyzed frequency range from 100 to 250 GHz, there are four electromagnetic modes: (1) two modes originating from a degenerate
E resonance state shown in
Fig. 6(a) and 6(b), (2) one mode originating from a non-degenerate
B
2 resonance state, and (3) one mode that has the character of the lowest TM waveguide mode of the dielectric slab whose original dispersion is very close to the light line given by
ω =
ck. The parity of the
electric field with respect to the
y coordinate is denoted by
py
, which the reader should note is opposite to that of the magnetic field. Because modes with the same parity mix with each other when their dispersion curves come close, they show apparent anti-crossing behaviors.
In
Fig. 7, the parity of the
electric field with respect to the
y coordinate is denoted by
py
. We should note that it is opposite to that of the magnetic field. Three of the four modes have the same
py
, so that they mix with each other when their dispersion curves come close and show apparent anti-crossing behaviors.
4. Controlled symmetry reduction
As we showed in Section 2 and Section 3, we can realize dispersion curves that are degenerate on the Γ point due to the spatial symmetry of the system. However, their dependence on the wave vector is quadratic in the vicinity of the Γ point, which may be an undesirable feature for the beam steering application.
The absence of k-linear terms in the Taylor expansion of ω
k
with respect to kx
and ky
are relevant to some vanishing
’s due to symmetry, as we will describe in the following. So, we may get a linear dispersion in the vicinity of the Γ point by intentional reduction of symmetry to yield non-vanishing
’s. Of course, this symmetry reduction results in non-degeneracy on the Γ point. So, in order to make the two frequencies coincide, we further have to make a fine adjustment of sample parameters, which is possible by using the electro-optic effect for example. We call this method “controlled symmetry reduction”. In this section, we examine its basic features with the square lattice as an example.
Now, let us examine symmetry reduction from
C
4v
to
Cs
. The latter is a simple point group that consists of identity (
E) and a mirror reflection (
σx
). Its characters are given in
Table 4. It is known by group theory that the
E mode of
C
4v
splits into an
A mode and a
B mode of
Cs
due to the lowered symmetry.
Table 4 Character Table of the Cs
Point Group
Even when the symmetry of the square lattice is reduced, the two split eigen frequencies are expected to be close to each other if the modification of the lattice structure is small. We assume that frequency separation with other resonant states, if any, is large compared with the splitting of the
E mode, and construct a Bloch function with the split
E mode functions alone. We denote them by
H
1 (
A mode) and
H
2 (
B mode). They satisfy
Eq. (4) as before but with different eigen frequencies:
The Bloch function is given by the linear combination of
H
1 and
H
2:
Because the number of symmetry operations is small for
Cs
, we have a smaller number of relations among
’s, which are defined by the following equation in the present case:
Derivation of relations among
’s is given in
Appendix D. The results are summarized as follows:
Then, by solving the secular equation as before, we obtain the dispersion relation:
Now, we examine the condition for accidental degeneracy of eigen frequencies on the Γ point by an appropriate choice of device parameters. By setting
kx
=
ky
= 0 in
Eq. (58), the condition for degeneracy is
In this case, the dispersion relation is somewhat simplified:
Finally, to examine its behavior in the vicinity of the Γ point, we assume |
kxa|, |
kya| ≪ 1 and only keep dominant terms. The result is
which has linear dependence on
kx
as we expected.
The reason for this feature can be understood by comparing
’s between the
C
4v
and
Cs
cases. Due to lowered symmetry,
and
are non-zero for
Cs, while they are vanishing for
C
4v
. These terms, which are represented by
L
1 in
Eqs. (58),
(60), and
(61), apparently give the
k-linear term.
This linear k dependence is desirable for application to steerable antennas as we mentioned in Section 1. Compared with the case of purely accidental degeneracy, the two frequencies on the Γ point are close to each other due to their original degeneracy in the case of controlled symmetry reduction. So, we may expect that their frequency tuning can be attained relatively easily.
5. Conclusion
We calculated dispersion curves of degenerate metamaterial antennas by tight-binding approximation based on structural electromagnetic resonances of metallic unit structures. Using the properties of the electromagnetic transfer integral,
, which were clarified by the group-theoretical treatment, we calculated the behavior of dispersion curves in the vicinity of the Γ point of the Brilluin zone. In the square lattice of the
C
4v
symmetry, the
E modes are doubly degenerate on the Γ point and their dispersion shows quadratic dependence on the wave vector. In the triangular lattice of the
C
6v
symmetry, dispersion curves of the
E
1 and
E
2 modes, which are also doubly degenerate on the Γ point, are isotropic and have quadratic dependence on the wave vector around the Γ point. To achieve linear
k dependence, which is desirable for application to steerable antennas, we proposed a method of
controlled symmetry reduction. As an example, we examined the case of symmetry reduction from
C
4v
to
Cs
and derived the dispersion relation of the latter, which showed linear
k dependence as we expected. To verify the analytical calculation, we presented some numerical results of the resonant states of unit structures of square and hexagonal symmetries together with dispersion curves of a square lattice. The theory given in this paper is an extension of our previous one [
12
K. Sakoda and H.-F. Zhou, “Role of structural electromagnetic resonances in a steerable left-handed antenna,” Opt. Express
18, 27371–27386 (2010). [CrossRef]
] to two-dimensional systems, for which we can achieve the deterministic degeneracy due to symmetry on the Γ point and the
controlled symmetry reduction becomes available.