Optical Properties of Bottom-up Metamaterials

The optical properties of metamaterials that can be fabricated with bottom-up approaches and which rely on a suitable arrangement of metallic nanoparticles in space are discussed. We outline the numerical challenges that have to be solved in order to describe such structures efficiently, discuss possible means to assign effective properties to these metamaterials and reveal the possible material dispersion that can be achieved by exploiting various carefully selected geometries.