ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the research on negative refraction has considerably grown in the past several years. It shows how proper combinations of nanoinductors and nanocapacitors may constitute a viable way to design negative-refractive metamaterials at optical frequencies and to interpret their anomalous electromagnetic features. In the nanocircuit analogy, each plasmonic nanoparticle would correspond to a lumped nanoinductor, and the free-space gaps between and around them correspond to the nanocapacitors. Such a cascade of inductors and capacitors is capable of guiding and transmitting the wave energy. The chapter focuses on three of the theoretical proposals in the regard: the use of properly designed nanoinclusions made of loops of plasmonic nanoparticles that may exhibit a resonant magnetic response, the use of plasmonic nanolayers, and the use of periodic lattices of nanoparticles.
