Abstract
This paper presents an efficient data-driven method to extract the effective metamaterial parameters unambiguously. This method is based on detecting the discontinuity points in the real part of the refractive index and discerning the correct branch values at these discontinuities. The proposed method is numerically simple and does not require an infinite frequency integration. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated by investigating thin and thick homogenous and periodically structured metamaterial slabs. This method attains correct values of the branch index and, hence, correct values of the refractive index at the entire frequency range for thin and thick slabs independently from its imaginary part. It, notably, succeeds in overcoming the frequency and dimension limits and saturation observed in the Kramers-Kronig (K-K) method in thick homogeneous and multi-cell periodically structured slabs. The proposed method also gives accurate values for the metamaterial parameters at resonance and at the negative parameter region. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement