Photonic Band Structure of One Dimensional Layered Structure Composed of Left-handed and Right-handed Materials by the Green Function Approach

In this paper, we study theoretically the photonic band structure of one-dimensional superlattice composed of alternating layers of right-handed and left-handed materials (RHM and LHM). The dispersion curves are studied by assuming that the dielectric permittivity and magnetic permeability are frequency dependent in each layer. It is shown that such structures can exhibit new types of electromagnetic modes and dispersion curves that do not exist in usual superlattices composed only of RHM. With an appropriate choice of the parameters, we show that it is possible to realize an absolute (or omnidirectional) band gap for either transverse electric (TE) or transverse magnetic (TM) polarizations of the electromagnetic waves. A combination of two multilayer structures composed of RHM and LHM is proposed to realize, in a certain range of frequency, an omnidirectional reflector of light for both polarizations.