Infrared (IR) light is considered important for short-range wireless
communication, thermal sensing, spectroscopy, material processing, medical
surgery, astronomy etc. However, IR light is in general much harder to
transport than optical light or microwave radiation. Existing hollow-core IR
waveguides usually use a layer of metallic coating on the inner wall of the
waveguide. Such a metallic layer, though reflective, still absorbs guided light
significantly due to its finite Ohmic loss, especially for transverse-magnetic
(TM) light. In this paper, we show that metal-wire based metamaterials may
serve as an efficient TM reflector, reducing propagation loss of the TM mode by
two orders of magnitude. By further imposing a conventional metal cladding
layer, which reflects specifically transverse-electric (TE) light, we can
potentially obtain a low-loss hollow-core fiber. Simulations confirm that loss
values for several low-order modes are comparable to the best results reported
so far.Comment: REVTeX, just over 9 page
