Superconducting Metamaterials and Plasmonics, organized by Nikolay Zheludev, ORC Southampton, UK

Superconducting metamaterials have recently emerged to offer a radically new paradigm for sensing, data processing and information technologies. They will provide a dramatic reduction of losses, accompanied by access to the extreme sensitivity of the superconducting state to external stimuli and the exceptional nonlinearity of superconductors enabling low energy switching. Negative dielectric constants and dominant kinetic resistance also make superconductors intriguing plasmonic media. Moreover, a fundamental change in the nature of information carriers is produced by superconductivity: in some implementations it will be possible to switch from the classical excitations of conventional plasmonic and metamaterial devices to quantum excitations underpinned by flux quantization and quantum interference effects.

Presenenters:

Alexandre Zagoskin, Loughborough University, UK: "Artificial atoms and quantum metamaterials: Watching a Schroedinger’s cat”
Giorgos Tsironis Univ. of Crete and FORTH, Greece: "Nonlinear modes and wave transmission in SQUID-based metamaterials"
Roger Buckingham, University of Southampton, UK: "Realising tunable, quantum and low-loss metamaterials and plasmonics with superconductors”
Steven M. Anlage, University of Maryland, USA: "Plasmonic Properties of Superconducting Metamaterials"
Alexey Ustinov, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany: "Superconducting artificial atoms as building blocks for quantum metamaterials"

Fano Phenomena and Electromagnetically Induced Transparency in Complex Multiresonant Metamaterials, organized by Gennady Shvets, The University of Texas at Austin, USA

As the sophistication of electromagnetic metamaterials is increasing, there is a growing number of quantum-mechanical phenomena that can be effectively emulated by these new emerging structures. One such phenomenon is the Fano Resonance that was originally observed in atomic systems and later in the solid state. In the context of metamaterials, Fano resonances provide an effective method of radiation lifetime engineering that enables ultra-sharp spectral lines and extremely high electromagnetic field enhancements. The other related phenomenon is the so-called Electromagnetically Induced Transparency. Both phenomena are observed in complex metamaterials supporting several resonances with vastly different radiative lifetimes. The five invited talks in this session will examine the fundamental physics behind these multi-resonant phenomena, such as nonlinear effects and the effects of disorder, as well as several exciting applications such as ultra-sensitive linear and nonlinear spectroscopies. The universality of Fano Resonances across the entire electromagnetic spectrum will be highlighted in this Session by drawing on the examples ranging from optical to microwave physics.

Presenters:

Steven Anlage, University of Maryland, USA: "Tunable Transparency Window with Meta-Molecules Utilizing Superconducting Dark Resonators”
Carsten Rockstuhl, U. Jena, Germany: "Engineering Resonances in THz Metamaterials”
Nikolay Zheludev, U. Southampton, UK:"Fano Resonances and Light Localization in Disordered Metamaterials"
Harald Giessen, U. Stuttgart, Germany: "Plasmonic oligomers and complex plasmonic structures"
Shuang Zhang, University of Birmingham, UK: "Symmetry breaking and nonlinear effects in PIT metamaterials".

Magnonics, organized by Volodymyr Kruglyak, University of Exeter, UK

The session will highlight the state of the art and recent advances in the emerging field of magnonics, with a special attention to the novel opportunities arising from the possibility to tailor and control spin wave resonances in nano-scale magnetic structures for the research fields of magnonic and electromagnetic metamaterials and associated technologies.

Presenters:

M. Krawczyk, Mickiewicz University, Poland: "Magnonic crystals and their metamaterials properties – theoretical considerations"
G. Gubbiotti, U. Perugia, Italy: "Spin wave band structure in planar magnonic crystals"
D. Grundler, Technical University of Munich, Germany: "Transmission of GHz spin waves through nano-patterned ferromagnetic metamaterials"
M. Inoue, Toyohashi University of Technology, Japan: "Magnonic band-gap metamaterials for magnetic field detection with very high sensitivity"
R. L. Stamps, University of Glasgow, UK: "Electric field control of surface spin waves".

Discussion forum "Theoretical foundations for homogenization theories", organized by A. Chipouline, C. Simovski, and S. Tretyakov

Averaging of the Maxwell equations (MEs), i.e., the transition between the microscopic MEs to their macroscopic counterparts, is one of the main steps in electrodynamics. In spite of the fundamental importance of the averaging procedure, it is extremely rare presented in university courses and respective books; up to now there is no established consensus about how the averaging procedure has to be performed.

The main goal of this discussion forum is to start creating a common basis for discussion of the mentioned above problem. Another goal is to establish the averaging procedure for the metamaterials, which is rather close to the case of compound materials but should include artificial magnetic response due to its inclusions shape and size. It is expected that the discussion will help us to elaborate an agreement about some basic principles for the averaging procedure (irrespective to the type of materials) which have to be satisfied. Any newly developed homogenization model has to correlate with these basic principles. Apparently, in case of absence of this evidence of correlation of a particular model with the basic principles the model could not be accepted as a creditable one. It is also expected that the discussion will help us to set more coherence in activities of different groups in their efforts to establish the averaging procedure for metamaterials.

We start from the consideration of bulk materials, which means in vast majority of cases that we consider propagation of an electromagnetic wave far from the interfaces, where the eigenwave in the media is already formed and stabilized. In the second part we set a basic structure for discussion about boundary conditions and layered metamaterials.

The discussion forum organizers have prepared some preliminary material for discussion, which can be found as an Arxiv preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.3835