Dispersive FDTD characterisation of no phase-delay radio transmission over layered left-handed meta-materials structure

At the interface of two materials with different permittivity and permeability, evanescent waves are excited and will constrain perfect imaging using left-handed meta-materials (LHMs). The dispersive finite-difference time-domain method is used to demonstrate that multilayer stacks, which consist of thin alternating layers of conventional materials and LHMs, can guide evanescent waves with very little attenuation at microwave frequencies and over large stack thicknesses. In addition, such layered structures demonstrate zero phase-delay over the stack thickness, a property that may be applied to construct a no phase-delay transmission line for applications such as beam forming networks for antenna arrays.