Broadband super-Planckian thermal emission from hyperbolic metamaterials

We develop the fluctuational electrodynamics of metamaterials with hyperbolic dispersion and show the existence of broadband thermal emission beyond the black body limit in the near field. This arises due to the thermal excitation of unique bulk metamaterial modes, which do not occur in conventional media. We consider a practical realization of the hyperbolic metamaterial and estimate that the effect will be observable using the characteristic dispersion (topological transitions) of the metamaterial states. Our work paves the way for engineering the near-field thermal emission using metamaterials. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4754616]