Giant optical nonlocality near the Dirac point in metal-dielectric multilayer metamaterials

The giant optical nonlocality near the Dirac point in lossless metal-dielectric multilayer metamaterials is revealed and investigated through the analysis of the band structure of the multilayer stack in the three-dimensional omega-k space, according to the transfer-matrix method with the optical nonlocal effect. The position of the Dirac point is analytically located in the omega-k space. It is revealed that the emergence of the Dirac point is due to the degeneracy of the symmetric and the asymmetric eigenmodes of the coupled surface plasmon polaritons. The optical nonlocality induced epsilon-near-zero frequency shift for the multilayer stack compared to the effective medium is studied. Furthermore, the giant optical nonlocality around the Dirac point is explored with the iso-frequency contour analysis, while the beam splitting phenomenon at the Dirac point due to the optical nonlocal effect is also demonstrated. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America