Anisotropic nonlinear response of periodic square or cubic composites

David J Bergman

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 1999, vol. 270, issue 1, 8-14

Abstract: It is well known that the linear electrical response of periodic composites with a microstructure that has sufficiently high symmetry is isotropic. I.e., the macroscopic conductivity or permittivity of such a system, in the absence of an external magnetic field, is a scalar quantity. This is the case for cubic microstructures in three dimensional composites, and for square as well as for triangular and hexagonal or honeycomb microstructures in columnar or thin-film composites. By contrast, it turns out that the macroscopic nonlinear response, in general, is non-isotropic even in such highly symmetric composite structures. We discuss a simple square network model and show that a nonlinear conductivity can be quite anisotropic despite the high (square) symmetry of the system. We also show that a similar model of a metal/dielectric composite with square symmetry can exhibit intrinsic optical bistability that is also strongly anisotropic.

Keywords: Composite medium; Nonlinear response; Anisotropy; Periodic microstructure; Conductivity; Dielectric permittivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:270:y:1999:i:1:p:8-14

DOI: 10.1016/S0378-4371(99)00148-X

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