ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book discusses the basic concepts such as effective continuity and discontinuity, locality and non-locality, weak and strong spatial dispersion. It reviews most relevant classical works in which quasi-static electromagnetic homogenization model suitable for media without weak spatial dispersion (WSD) was developed. The book provides a quasi-static theory based on the hierarchy of multipoles. It shows that there are three physical effects of WSD: artificial magnetism, bianisotropy and the second-order retardation effect described by the so-called b-parameter. The last effect corresponds to the presence of the spatial derivatives of the mean field in the material equations. The book describes all three effects are within the framework of the general multipolar model. It considers the homogenization of the media which possess the magnetic dipole resonance being effectively continuous. Such composite media refer to the class of metamaterials.
