Prospects for nonlinear metamaterials

Summary form only given. Metamaterials (MMs) have emerged as a novel and promising field for tomorrow´s microwave technology. A number of components, antennas and refractive applications, based on transmission line (TL) type MMs, have already been proposed and demonstrated. Recently, nonlinear (NL) MMs were introduced along with the idea of exploiting the intrinsic frequency dispersion (FD) of left-handed (LH) structures in conjunction with some nonlinearity (e.g. from varactor diodes) to potentially produce novel types of solitons and shock waves. This contribution investigates novel directions for NL (FD) MMs. Issues considered include the existence and nature of soliton and shock waves in NL MM TLs, possible pulse manipulations allowed by such TLs (e.g. alternative solitary/shock wave-forms, ultra-short pulses production, impulse forming networks, etc.), implementations in combination with NL ferroelectric (e.g. BST, SbSI) and ferrimagnetic (YIG films, nanoferrites) materials