Giant Goos-Hänchen effect at the reflection from left-handed metamaterials

As is known, a totally reflected beam experiences a lateral displacement from its position predicted by the geometric optics because each of its plane-wave components undergoes a different phase change [1]. For the beam reflected from an interface, the lateral beam shift (the so-called Goos-Hänchen effect) is usually much less than the beam width. However, larger beam shifts may occur in the layered systems supporting surface waves, which are able to transfer energy along the interface. Such surface waves are not excited at a single interface because the phase-matching condition between the incident and surface waves are not satisfied. However, a surface polariton can be excited in a layered structure, when the beam is incident at the angle larger than the angle of the total internal reflection. Excitations of polaritons take place in two well known geometries of the attenuated beam reflection (used e.g. for the measurements of the dielectric permittivity of solids): (i) glass prism-airsilver structure (the so-called Otto configuration) and (ii) prism-silver film-air structure (the so-called Kretchmann configuration) (see, e.g., Ref. [2] and references therein).