Light scattering in pseudo-passive media with uniformly balanced gain and loss

We introduce a class of metamaterials with uniformly balanced gain and loss associated with complex permittivity and permeability constants. The refractive index of such a balanced pseudo-passive metamaterial is real. An unbounded uniform pseudo-passive medium has transport characteristics similar to those of its truly passive and lossless counterpart with the same real refractive index. However, bounded pseudo-passive samples show some unexpected scattering features which can be further emphasized by including such elements in a photonic structure.