Electromagnetic metamaterials: recent advances on the theory, experiments, and applications

Electromagnetic metamaterials, first known as left-handed materials (LHM) or negative refractive index materials (NIM), have attracted intensive attention in the electromagnetic communities in the past years. Right now, the concept of metamaterials has much broader scope than that of LHM or NIM. Metamaterials are actually macroscopic composites of periodic or non-periodic structures, whose function is due to both the cellular architectures and the chemical compositions. This paper presents some recent progress on metamaterials, including the optical transformation theory, experiments on metamaterials, new physical discoveries and phenomena, the relationship between the computational electromagnetics and metamaterials, and real applications on microwave components and antennas.