Extreme nonlinear electrodynamics in metamaterials with very small linear dielectric permittivity

We consider a subwavelength periodic layered medium whose slabs are filled by arbitrary linear metamaterials and standard nonlinear Kerr media and show that the homogenized medium behaves as a Kerr medium whose parameters can assume values not available in standard materials. Exploiting such a parameter availability, we focus on the situation where the linear relative dielectric permittivity is very small, thus allowing the observation of the extreme nonlinear regime where the nonlinear polarization is comparable with or even greater than the linear part of the overall dielectric response. The behavior of the electromagnetic field in the extreme nonlinear regime is very peculiar and characterized by interesting features such as the transverse power flow reversing. In order to probe this regime, we consider a class of fields (transverse magnetic nonlinear guided waves) admitting full analytical description and show that these waves are allowed to propagate even in media with epsilon < 0 and mu > 0 since the nonlinear polarization produces a positive overall effective permittivity. The considered nonlinear waves exhibit, in addition to the mentioned features, a number of interesting properties like hyperfocusing induced by the phase difference between the field components.