Invisibility cloaks, superlenses, and optical remote scattering

André Nicolet; Frédéric Zolla

doi:10.1117/12.887048

17 May 2011 Invisibility cloaks, superlenses, and optical remote scattering

André Nicolet, Frédéric Zolla

Proceedings Volume 8070, Metamaterials VI; 80700S (2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.887048
Event: SPIE Optics + Optoelectronics, 2011, Prague, Czech Republic

Abstract

In recent years, transformation optics has become a very active new field. It has been popularized through the idea of J.B. Pendry that an invisibility cloak can be designed by transforming space and considering the corresponding equivalent material properties. Indeed, it is a deep property of the Maxwell's equations that they are purely topological (when written in the proper formalism) and that all the metric aspects can be encapsulated in the electromagnetic material properties. A direct consequence is that any continuous transformation of space can be encoded in an equivalent permittivity and permeability. In this paper, we discuss the meaning of transform optics to show how global quantities defined by geometric integrals are in fact left invariant by the transformation. Extending this principle beyond continuous transformations allows to design exotic optical devices such as the invisibility cloak. Another example of transformation optics devices are the superlenses : even if these devices were proposed a few years before the rise of transform optics, they are nicely interpreted as corresponding to a folding of the space on itself. It has been suggested that such devices allow a kind of "remote action" of the scatterers making possible things such as immaterial waveguides called "invisible tunnels". In this paper, we investigate numerically (using finite element modelling) the behaviour of invisibility cloaks and cylindrical superlenses to show some of their amazing possibilities but also to define some of their limitations.

Citation Download Citation

André Nicolet and Frédéric Zolla "Invisibility cloaks, superlenses, and optical remote scattering", Proc. SPIE 8070, Metamaterials VI, 80700S (17 May 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.887048

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