Subluminal to superluminal propagation in a left-handed medium

In this paper we report large group delays in the propagation of narrow-band pulses through a dispersive medium with both dielectric function and magnetic permeability negative. We show how the numerical results can be understood in terms of the phase time as calculated from the complex transmission amplitude. We also demonstrate superluminal passage and saturation of phase time in the same material albeit in a different spectral region.

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