Controlling surface waves with temporal discontinuities of metasurfaces

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the scattering of surface waves on reactive impedance boundaries when the surface impedance undergoes a sudden change in time. We report three exotic wave phenomena. First, it is shown that by switching the value of the surface capacitance of the boundary, the velocity of surface waves can be fully controlled, and the power of reflected and transmitted surface waves are amplified. Second, we show that when a capacitive boundary is switched to an inductive one, the surface wave stops completely, with a "frozen" static magnetic field distribution. The static magnetic fields are "melt" and restore propagating surface waves when the boundary is switched back to a capacitive one. Third, we show that temporal jumps of the boundary impedance couple free-space propagating waves to the surface wave, which is an analog to a spatial prism. These interesting effects enabled by temporal jumps of metasurface properties open up new possibilities for the generation and control of surface waves.