I have seen unit cell designs that only perform at normal incidence while there are some designs that perform for a wide range of incidence angles. what is the reason or explanation behind this. what makes them angularly stable.
Phase on the surface may be related to the phase of an incident plane wave via phase-matching principles and the constitutive relations between wave vector components. So then, observing a large range of incident angles is equivalent to observing a large range of wave vector (k) values on the surface.
If the phase incurred across the metasurface element has a strong frequency dependence, the metasurface will tend to only operate over a small range of angles, which correspond to the frequency/frequencies of operation of the surface mode. Alternatively, if the phase across the metasurface has a weak frequency dependence, it will tend to operate over a wide range of incident angles.
We can visualize these modes on a dispersion (k-Beta or w-k) diagram. Modes which have a strong frequency dependence vs angle will exist over a large portion of these diagrams with some k-dependent slope. Resonant modes, however, will exist as pretty much straight lines -- indicating that over all possible k values, the frequency band stays pretty much constant.
See Yang and Rahmat-Samii's book, "Electromagnetic Bandgap Structures in Antenna Engineering" (ISBN: 9780521889919), Chapter 2, for a more detailed description.
Phase on the surface may be related to the phase of an incident plane wave via phase-matching principles and the constitutive relations between wave vector components. So then, observing a large range of incident angles is equivalent to observing a large range of wave vector (k) values on the surface.
If the phase incurred across the metasurface element has a strong frequency dependence, the metasurface will tend to only operate over a small range of angles, which correspond to the frequency/frequencies of operation of the surface mode. Alternatively, if the phase across the metasurface has a weak frequency dependence, it will tend to operate over a wide range of incident angles.
We can visualize these modes on a dispersion (k-Beta or w-k) diagram. Modes which have a strong frequency dependence vs angle will exist over a large portion of these diagrams with some k-dependent slope. Resonant modes, however, will exist as pretty much straight lines -- indicating that over all possible k values, the frequency band stays pretty much constant.
See Yang and Rahmat-Samii's book, "Electromagnetic Bandgap Structures in Antenna Engineering" (ISBN: 9780521889919), Chapter 2, for a more detailed description.