title: Optical properties of a fabricated self-assembled bottom-up bulk metamaterial.
abstract: We investigate the optical properties of a true three-dimensional metamaterial that was fabricated using a self-assembly bottom-up technology. The metamaterial consists of closely packed spherical clusters being formed by a large number of non-touching gold nanoparticles. After presenting experimental results, we apply a generalized Mie theory to analyze its spectral response revealing that it is dominated by a magnetic dipole contribution. By using an effective medium theory we show that the fabricated metamaterial exhibits a dispersive effective permeability, i.e. artificial magnetism. Although this metamaterial is not yet left-handed it might serve as a starting point for achieving bulk metamaterials by using bottom-up approaches.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Condensed Matter Theory and Solid State Optics, Abbe Center of Photonics, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Max-Wien-Platz 1, 07743 Jena, Germany. stefan.muehlig@uni-jena.de
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mühlig
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rockstuhl
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Yannopapas
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Bürgi
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Shalkevich
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Lederer