Loss induced negative refraction and super-prism effect at highly absorptive interface*

Abstract

Abstract It is well-established that waves are inhomogeneous in a lossy isotropic medium, and the validation of the classical Snell's law is still questionable for light refraction at the dissipative and dispersive interface. With high absorption, direct experimental investigation is rather difficult due to the extremely short penetration depth; i.e., the skin depth. In this paper, a simple and unified description of this issue is proposed, which can be applied to both materials with anomalous dispersion and in the Drude region. The gradient ∇ k ω is found to be incident angle θ i-dependent, and the direction of the group velocity may deviate significantly from the phase velocity due to the loss induced permittivity structure. The physics behind the negative refraction effect is explained, and a novel loss induced super-prism effect is also predicted.