In this paper, we elaborate on the operator effective medium approximation developed recently in Popov et al. [Phys. Rev. B 94, 085428 (2016)] to get insight into the surface polariton excitation at the interface of a multilayer hyperbolic metamaterial (HMM). In particular, we find that HMMs with bilayer unit cells support the TE- and TM-polarized surface waves beyond the Maxwell Garnett approximation due to the spatial dispersion interpreted as effective magnetoelectric coupling. The latter is also responsible for the dependence of surface wave propagation on the order of layers in the unit cell. Elimination of the magnetoelectric coupling in three-layer unit cells complying with inversion symmetry restores the qualitative regularity of the Maxwell Garnett approximation, as well as strongly suppresses the influence of the order of layers in the unit cell.

中文翻译：

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多层双曲超材料上的表面波：有效介质近似的算子方法

在本文中，我们详细介绍了Popov等人最近开发的算子有效介质近似。[物理 B版 94，085428（2016）]来深入了解多层双曲线超材料（HMM）界面处的表面极化子激发。特别是，我们发现具有双层单位单元的HMM支持超过Maxwell Garnett近似的TE和TM极化表面波，这是由于空间色散被解释为有效的磁电耦合。后者还负责表面波传播对单位晶格中各层顺序的依赖性。消除了符合反对称性的三层单元电池中的磁电耦合，可以恢复麦克斯韦·加内特近似值的定性规律，并可以极大地抑制单元电池中层顺序的影响。