Plane-Wave Propagation in Extreme Magnetoelectric Media

The extreme magnetoelectric (EME) medium is defined in terms of two medium dyadics, α, producing electric polarization by the magnetic field and β, producing magnetic polarization by the electric field. Plane-wave propagation of time-harmonic fields of fixed finite frequency in the EME medium is studied. It is shown that (if ω ≠ 0) the dispersion equation has a cubic and homogeneous form, whence the wave vector k is either zero or has arbitrary magnitude. In many cases there is no dispersion equation ("NDE medium") to restrict the wave vector in an EME medium. Attention is paid to the case where the two medium dyadics have the same set of eigenvectors. In such a case the k vector is restricted to three eigenplanes defined by the medium dyadics. The emergence of such a result is demonstrated by considering a more regular medium, and taking the limit of zero permittivity and inverse permeability. The special case of uniaxial EME medium is studied in detail. It is shown that an interface of a uniaxial EME medium appears as a DB boundary when the axis of the medium is normal to the interface. More in general, EME media display interesting wave effects that can potentially be realized through metasurface engineering.