Modular approach to understanding and synthesis of metamaterials and metasurfaces

The vast majority of previously proposed metamaterials and metasurfaces are anisotropic or bianisotropic (exhibiting magnetoelectric coupling). Nevertheless, their anisotropy was not fully exploited as they were designed only for one or several specific illumination directions. In this talk, we propose a simple analytical approach to characterize properties of general bianisotropic meta-atoms for an arbitrary illumination. The approach is based on the qualitative decomposition of an arbitrary meta-atom into separate basic "modules" with elementary polarization properties. Such decomposition can be used for comprehensive characterization of previously designed structures as well as for synthesizing novel bianisotropic inclusions of arbitrary complexity and with desired response.