Tunneling modes of photonic heterostructures consisting of single-negative materials

We show theoretically that heterostructures consisting of single-negative materials can possess tunneling modes inside forbidden gaps, owing to the resonant coupling of the evanescent-wave-based interface modes. The tunneling modes appear when the heterostructure becomes nihility. They are independent of incident angles and polarizations and have zero phase delay, which can be utilized to design zero-phase-shift omnidirectional filters. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.