Surface polaritons and transmission in multi-layer structures containing anisotropic left-handed materials

We study the surface polaritons and optical transmission in multi-layer structures containing alternate anisotropic left-handed materials and isotropic right-handed materials. By means of the transfer matrix method, the dispersive relations of the surface polaritons are derived. In contrast to the single left-handed slab, the multi-layer structure is capable of supporting more surface polaritons due to the existence of more interfaces between the left-handed and right-handed layers. We further make detailed investigations of the optical transmission associated with the surface polaritons. Numerical results show that the variance of the thickness of each layer will obviously affect the positions of the transmission peaks, corresponding to the surface polariton branches. Moreover, the presence of the absorption in the anisotropic left-handed materials plays a crucial role in the optical transmission spectra.