Insertion effects of natural dielectric between artificial dielectrics formed by metallic sub-wavelength slit arrays

We investigated the optical transmission properties of a metamaterial system in which a natural dielectric is inserted between metallic sub-wavelength slit arrays that behave as an artificial dielectric when the incident light wavelength is longer than the slit periodicity. Transmission spectra were measured using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy, and the experimental results were analyzed by simulations based on the finite-difference time-domain method. We revealed that the resonance characteristics are defined by the two diffraction-limit frequencies for the inner and outer openings of the slits, which are different for the insertion of the dielectric. We also determined further details on the blue-shift behavior specific to the even-order resonance modes by accounting for the refractive index of the inserted intermediate dielectric. In addition, we experimentally demonstrated that insertion of a dielectric having a high refraction index enhances the frequency repulsion at the anticrossing, i.e., the coupling strength, between the symmetric and antisymmetric optical modes. These experimental and theoretical results will be essential for understanding and developing applications for hybrid systems composed of dielectrics with both fixed and widely tunable refractive indices.