Evolutionary trade-offs between reproduction and dispersal in populations at expanding range boundaries

During recent climate warming, some species have expanded their ranges northwards to keep track of climate changes. Evolutionary changes in dispersal have been demonstrated in these expanding populations and here we show that increased dispersal is associated with reduced investment in reproduction in populations of the speckled wood butterfly, Pararge aegeria. Evolutionary changes in flight versus reproduction will affect the pattern and rate of expansion at range boundaries in the future, and understanding these responses will be crucial for predicting the distribution of species in the future as climates continue to warm

Optical bistability involving planar metamaterial with broken structural symmetry

We report on a bistable light transmission through a planar metamaterial composed of a metal pattern of weakly asymmetric elements placed on a nonlinear substrate. Such structure bears the Fano-like sharp resonance response of a trapped-mode excitation. The feedback required for bistability is provided by the coupling between the strong antiphased trapped-mode-resonance currents excited on the metal elements and the intensity of inner field in the nonlinear substrate.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

"Slow" light in metamaterials

We demonstrate that propagation of microwave pulses can be significantly affected by the presence of a planar fish-scale metamaterial, which is at least 30 times thinner than the wavelength. In the resonant band of the fish-scale structure, a spectrally narrow pulse (18 ns) can be significantly delayed (by 5.6 ns) as if propagating through an 84 cm thick dielectric (epsilon=3.77), while a short pulse (220 ps) will split in two roughly equal pulses propagating with subluminal and superluminal velocity respectively. We also interpret the response of the metamaterial in terms of effective material parameters

Two-oscillator model of trapped-modes interaction in a nonlinear bilayer fish-scale metamaterial

We discuss the similarity between the nature of resonant oscillations in two nonlinear systems, namely, a chain of coupled Duffing oscillators and a bilayer fish-scale metamaterial. In such systems two different resonant states arise which differ in their spectral lines. The spectral line of the first resonant state has a Lorentzian form, while the second one has a Fano form. This difference leads to a specific nonlinear response of the systems which manifests itself in appearance of closed loops in spectral lines and bending and overlapping of resonant curves. Conditions of achieving bistability and multistability are found out.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

Transmission enhancement in loss-gain multilayers by resonant suppression of reflection

Using the transfer-matrix approach and solving time-domain differential equations, we analyze the loss compensation mechanism in multilayer systems composed of an absorbing transparent conductive oxide and dielectric doped with an active material. We reveal also another regime with the possibility of enhanced transmission with suppressed reflection originating from the resonant properties of the multilayers. For obliquely incident and evanescent waves, such enhanced transmission under suppressed reflection turns into the reflectionless regime, which is similar to that observed in the PT-symmetric structures, but does not require PT symmetry. We infer that the reflectionless transmission is due to the full loss compensation at the resonant wavelengths of the multilayers.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure

Asymmetric transmission of light through a planar chiral metamaterial

We report that normal incidence transmission of circularly polarized light through lossy anisotropic planar chiral meta-material is asymmetric for opposite directions. The new effect is fundamentally distinct from conventional gyrotropy of bulk chiral media and the Faraday Effect

Enhancement of absorption bistability by trapping light planar metamaterial

We propose to achieve a strong bistable response of a thin layer of a saturable absorption medium by involving a planar metamaterial specially designed to bear a high-Q trapped-mode resonance in the infrared region.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure