  We present a new type of electromagnetic planar metamaterial that exhibit
strong dispersion at a local minimum of losses and is believed to be the first
metamaterial analog of electromagnetically induced transparency. We demonstrate
that pulses propagating through such metamaterials experience considerable
delay, whereas the thickness of the structure along the direction of wave
propagation is much smaller than the wavelength, which allows successive
stacking of multiple metamaterial slabs. This leads to a significant increase
in the band of normal dispersion, as well as in transmission levels.
