New aspects of artificial diamagnetics

Artificial diamagnetic metamaterials are known to produce impressively low permeability values in a broad frequency range. As an observable feature however, the same is true for good conductors. We analyse performance of artificial diamagnetics with regards to applications such as levitation, in comparison to bulk metals, and show that as long as the fields in the exterior of the body are concerned, non-structured metals outperform metamaterial structure. Furthermore, we calculate the response of practical samples of artificial diamagnetics, taking their discrete structure and finite size into account, and find that predictions of effective medium theory are much better applicable to non-resonant structures than to resonant ones.