Controlling electromagnetic scattering with wire metamaterial resonators

Manipulation of radiation is required for enabling a span of electromagnetic applications. Since properties of antennas and scatterers are very sensitive to the surrounding environment, macroscopic artificially created materials are good candidates for shaping their characteristics. In particular, metamaterials enable controlling both dispersion and density of electromagnetic states, available for scattering from an object. As a result, properly designed electromagnetic environments could govern wave phenomena and tailor various characteristics. Here electromagnetic properties of scattering dipoles, situated inside a wire medium (metamaterial), are analyzed both numerically and experimentally. The effect of the metamaterial geometry, dipole arrangement inside the medium, and frequency of the incident radiation on the scattering phenomena is studied in detail. It is shown that the resonance of the dipole hybridizes with Fabry-Perot modes of the metamaterial, giving rise to a complete reshaping of electromagnetic properties. Regimes of controlled scattering suppression and super-scattering are experimentally observed. Numerical analysis is in agreement with the experiment, performed at the GHz spectral range. The reported approach to scattering control with metamaterials could be directly mapped into optical and infrared spectral ranges by employing scalability properties of Maxwell's equations.