"Static" Optics (1407.2338v1)

Abstract: In recent years, the concept of metamaterials has offered platforms for unconventional tailoring and manipulation of the light-matter interaction. Here, we explore the notion of "static optics", in which the electricity and magnetism are decoupled and their fields are statically distributed, while being temporally dynamic. This occurs when both the relative effective permittivity and permeability attain near-zero values at an operating frequency. We theoretically investigate some of the unprecedented wave features, such as unusual radiation characteristics of an emitter embedded in such epsilon-and-mu-near-zero (EMNZ) media. Using such static-optical medium one might in principle "open up" and "stretch" the space, and have regions behaving electromagnetically as "single points" despite being electrically large. We suggest a possible design for implementation of such structures using a single dielectric rod inserted in a waveguide operating near its cut-off frequency, providing the possibility of having electrically large "empty" volumes to behave as EMNZ static-optical media.