Left-handed metamaterials: The fishnet structure and its variations

We investigate, both theoretically and experimentally, a left-handed metamaterial design composed of pairs of short slabs connected with continuous wires, operating in microwave frequency regime. The design was found to give left-handed behavior for a wide range of structure parameters, maintaining high impedance match with free space. We introduce a capacitor-inductor circuit description of the design and we show that this description can account for all the characteristics of its electromagnetic behavior, explaining also its superior performance.