Loss enhanced transmission and collimation in anisotropic epsilon-near-zero metamaterials

We verify the extraordinary transmission enhancement and collimation induced by the material loss in anisotropic epsilon-near-zero metamaterials, and reveal the physical mechanism of this exotic electromagnetic phenomenon via the iso-frequency contour analysis. In addition, we demonstrate the possibility in realization of such loss enhanced transmission of Gaussian beam in realistic silver-germanium multilayered structures by applying full-wave numerical simulations. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4770374]