Prediction of negative refraction in Dirac semimetal metamaterial

Abstract Negative refraction materials are indispensable building blocks in the optoelectric devices for their unique functionalities of controlling the light propagations, such as, superlens and transformation optics. However, material realizations of negative refraction are still limited to the conventional metals, semiconductors as well as magnetic materials. Here, we show that three dimensional Dirac semimetals have the opportunity to enable the negative refraction, which can be achieved through alternatively stacking three dimensional Dirac semimetals and the dielectric layers together. It is found that the effective perpendicular and parallel permittivities in this multilayered stack display the respective negative and positive values over a certain frequency region, which enables its negative group refractive angle and it can be controlled by the Fermi energy of Dirac semimetals. The spectra of transmittance in the multilayered structure for transverse magnetic wave also reveals an incident angle-independent transmittance dip, which originates from the zero value of the real part of the effective perpendicular permittivity. Our findings unveil the essential role of three dimensional Dirac semimetals in producing the negative group refraction responses and promise their applications in the metamaterial-based devices.