Nonlocal Cable-Network Metamaterials

Metamaterials are artificial materials in which the atoms of ordinary solids are replaced by tailored functional building blocks. Therefore, previous work has emphasized tailoring the inside of the building blocks, for example, by exploiting local resonances, to realize unusual effective metamaterial properties. However, the wave properties of a metamaterial are not only determined by its building blocks but also by the interactions between these building blocks. Here, reconfigurable "plug-and-play" electromagnetic metamaterials are introduced for which the building blocks are essentially trivial standard bayonet Neill-Concelman (BNC) connectors and the effective metamaterial properties are solely achieved by tailoring the local and especially the nonlocal interactions mediated by standard coaxial cables. Unprecedented dispersion relations of the lowest band with multiple regions of slow waves and backward waves are demonstrated. Importantly, the dispersion relation of such metamaterials dominated by nonlocal interactions is not limited by the principle of causality in the same way as for metamaterials designed by local resonances of building blocks.