Left-handed materials made of dilute ferromagnetic wire arrays with gyrotropic tensors

In this article, we theoretically investigate properties of normally incident microwave propagation in dilute metallic ferromagnetic wire array (DMFWA) slabs with gyrotropic tensors. It is found that DMFWA may become left-handed materials (LHM) in a narrow frequency range below the plasma frequency, even the real part of the corresponding inversion permeability element is positive. Comparing with the isotropic materials having same diagonal permeability elements, due to existence of off-diagonal elements of the gyrotropic permeability tensor, the DMFWA becomes a LHM in a higher frequency range depended on its geometric structure. In addition, E, H, and wave vector Re(k) of microwave propagating in the DMFWA form an approximately left-handed triplet of vectors. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.