Termination-Driven Control over Bound States in the Continuum Q-Factors and Frequencies in Plasmonic Double Net Metamaterials

Interlaced metallic wire meshes are 3D metamaterials consisting of two intertwined metallic networks. These plasmonic double nets give rise to otherwise unobserved longitudinal, weakly dispersive, and broadband electron acoustic modes from the effective plasma frequency of the double net down to arbitrarily low frequencies. These modes have recently been shown to generate confined slab modes with extremely long lifetimes (high quality factors), so-called quasi-bound states in the continuum. This work reveals the central role of the double net termination in determining the mode’s resonant frequency and quality factor. We compare two limiting cases: a tennis net termination recently studied experimentally by others and a protruding column array with a much lower quality factor, as demonstrated by microwave transmission experiments and full-wave simulations. Our work thus vividly demonstrates the failure of a homogenization approach to explain and quantify the physics of terminated plasmonic network materials. We introduce a new approach in which additional evanescent bulk states are included in the scattering problem, yielding a qualitative understanding of the slab’s optical response. The resulting engineering principles pave the way for the design and exploitation of these materials for applications such as coherent light generation.