Effective medium theory for Van-Der-Waals heterostructures

Abstract

We derive the electromagnetic medium equivalent to a collection of all-dielectric nano-particles (enjoying high refractive indices) distributed locally non-periodically in a smooth domain $\Omega$. Such distributions are used to model well known structures in material sciences as the Van-der-Waals heterostructures. Since the nano-particles are all-dielectric, then the permittivity remains unchanged while the permeability is altered by this effective medium. This equivalent medium describes, in particular, the effective medium of 2 dimensional type Van-der-Waals heterostructures. These structures are 3 dimensional which are build as superposition of identical (2D)-sheets each supporting locally non-periodic distributions of nano-particles. An explicit form of this effective medium is provided for the particular case of honeycomb heterostructures. At the mathematical analysis level, we propose a new approach to derive the effective medium when the subwavelength nano-particles are distributed non-periodically. The first step consists in deriving the point interaction approximation, also called the Foldy-Lax approximation. The scattered field is given as a superposition of dipoles (or poles for other models) multiplied by the elements of a vector which is itself solution of an algebraic system. This step is done regardless of the way how the particles are distributed. As a second step, which is the new and critical step, we rewrite this algebraic system according to the way how these nano-particles are locally distributed. The new algebraic system will then fix the related continuous Lippmann Schwinger system which, in its turn, indicates naturally the equivalent medium.