Three-dimensional metacrystals with a broadband isotropic diamagnetic response and an all-angle negative index of refraction

Metamaterials (MMs) and photonic crystals (PhCs) exhibiting artificially engineered physical properties have been widely studied in the past decade. However, abnormal properties could only be proposed under a limited range of polarization and directions in most of the previous studies. It is still a challenge to realize an isotropic artificial material with multiple exotic electromagnetic properties. Here we report a three-dimensional metacrystal supporting full polarization and omni-directional incidence. The center-symmetric unit cell consists of non-resonant closed metallic loops on each surface of the dielectric cube. With the cross-scale dispersion engineering, the metacrystal can exhibit an isotropic diamagnetic response and an all-angle negative index of refraction simultaneously at the opposite sides of the MM-PhC transition region. An additional numerical analysis shows the good performance in terahertz and mid-infrared frequencies, which indicates its potential applications on multi-functional optical components with wide polarization-and-direction allowance. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America