A brief intro to metamaterials

Metamaterials are new artificial materials with unusual electromagnetic properties that are not found in naturally occurring materials. All "natural" materials such as glass, diamond and such have positive electrical permittivity, magnetic permeability and an index of refraction. In these new artificially fabricated materials - termed as negative index materials (NIM) or double negative (ONG) media or left handed (LH) materials or backward wave (BW) media - all these material parameters are negative. With these unusual material parameters, new kinds of miniaturized antennas and microwave components/devices can be created for the wireless communications and the defense industries. The electrical permittivity and the magnetic permeability are the main determinants of a material's response to electromagnetic (EM) waves. In metamaterials, both these material parameters are negative. Correspondingly, the refractive index of the metamaterials is also negative. Another strange property of metamaterials is its reverse Doppler effect.