2003/01/01 by Jian Qi Shen, J. Q. Shen
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Antenna and Metasurface Technologies #Electromagnetic Scattering and Analysis #Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1238/physica.regular.068a00087
published as Physica Scripta (Sweden) Vol.68, p.87-97 (2003) · 9 pages, Latex
openalex publication_date 2003/01/01 · arxiv created 2003/02/18 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
The connections between the anti-shielding effect, negative absolute temperature and superluminal light propagation in instantaneously reversed electric fields and in left-handed media are considered in the present paper. An instantaneous inversion of the exterior electric field may put the electric dipoles into a state of negative absolute temperature and therefore give rise to a negative effective mass term of the electromagnetic field (i.e., the electromagnetic field propagating inside the negative-temperature medium will acquire an imaginary rest mass), which is said to result in the potential superluminality effect of light propagation in this anti-shielding dielectric. In left-handed media, such phenomena may also arise.