As early as 1968, Veselago theoretically pioneered the
conceptual materials with simultaneously negative permittivity and permeability , called left-handed materials
LHMs.
1 Since the recent leading works of Pendry et al.2
and Smith et al.,
3,4 the related study has become a readily
growing field. Inasmuch as there are no naturally existing
materials with negative , such a different category of arti-
ficial materials brings certainly many peculiar electromagnetic phenomena, different physics, and promising
applications.5–7 It is well known that in regular right-handed
materials RHMs the behaviors of electromagnetic wave
propagation are completely governed by , solely because
is always unity. From the point of view of crystal optics,
RHMs are usually classified into only three distinct categories as optically isotropic, uniaxial and biaxial. In LHMs,
however, the propagation characteristics of electromagnetic
waves are governed by both and . The appearance of
certainly makes the physical contents of the electromagnetic
wave propagations very abundant and changes the required
conditions for the above categories in LHMs.
In LH