Large lateral shift near pseudo-Brewster angle on reflection from a weakly absorbing double negative medium.

We focus on the lateral shift for an electromagnetic wave reflected from a weakly absorbing double negative medium (DNM). A large lateral shift near the pseudo-Brewster angle is found, which may be negative or positive. We give an analytic expression for such a kind of lateral shift, from which the critical transition point for sign-changing of the lateral shift can be easily obtained. Theoretical analysis shows that the absorption of DNM, even though very weak, plays an important role in determining the lateral shift. As evidences, we calculate the lateral shift by means of the momentum method and perform the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations. We find that the results of our theoretical analysis are reliable.