Transmission studies of left-handed materials

Left-handed materials are studied numerically using an improved version of the transfer-matrix method. The transmission, reflection, phase of reflection, and absorption are calculated and compared with experiments for both single split-ring resonators with negative permeability and left-handed materials, which have both the permittivity epsilon and permeability mu negative. Our results suggest ways of positively identifying materials that have both epsilon and mu negative, from materials that have either mu or epsilon negative.