Various electromagnetic modes of nondissipative anisotropic metamaterial

Interaction of light and matter can be controlled and manipulated by exploiting the properties of the isofrequency contours (IFCs) of a material. IFC in metamaterial/artificial anisotropic materials can be open and/or closed. The class of metamaterials with open IFC are known as hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs)/indefinite media. HMMs support large wavevectors, which can lead to some important consequences, such as energy transfer (long range), metacavity lasers (subwavelength scale), sensors (high sensitivity), and hyperlenses (surpassing diffraction limit). Therefore, in this paper wavevector planes for media with open and closed IFCs are investigated with an aim to further differentiate them into regions supporting distinct electromagnetic modes, orientation of power, wavevector, and positive-negative phase velocities.