Invisibility Cloak And Ultra-powerful Microscopes: New Research Field Promises Radical Advances In Optical Technologies

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A new research field called transformation optics may usher in a host of radical advances including a cloak of invisibility and ultra-powerful microscopes and computers by harnessing nanotechnology and “metamaterials.”

The field, which applies mathematical principles similar to those in Einstein’s theory of general relativity, will be described in an article to be published Friday (Oct. 17) in the journal Science. The article will appear in the magazine’s Perspectives section and was written by Vladimir Shalaev, Purdue’s Robert and Anne Burnett Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The list of possible breakthroughs includes a cloak of invisibility; computers and consumer electronics that use light instead of electronic signals to process information; a “planar hyperlens” that could make optical microscopes 10 times more powerful and able to see objects as small as DNA; advanced sensors; and more efficient solar collectors.

“Transformation optics is a new way of manipulating and controlling light at all distances, from the macro- to the nanoscale, and it represents a new paradigm for the science of light,” Shalaev said. “Although there were early works that helped to develop the basis for transformation optics, the field was only recently established thanks in part to papers by Sir John Pendry at the Imperial College, London, and Ulf Leonhardt at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and their co-workers.”

Current optical technologies are limited because, for the efficient control of light, components cannot be smaller than the size of the wavelengths of light. Transformation optics sidesteps this limitation using a new class of materials, or metamaterials, which are able to guide and control light on all scales, including the scale of nanometers, or billionths of a meter.

“The whole idea behind metamaterials is to create materials designed and engineered out of artificial atoms, meta-atoms, which are smaller than the wavelengths of light itself,” Shalaev said. “One of the most exciting applications is an electromagnetic cloak that could bend light around itself, similar to the flow of water around a stone, making invisible both the cloak and an object hidden inside.”

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Tags: cloak of invisibility, imperial college london, Innovation, solar collectors, theory of general relativity, university of st andrews, vladimir shalaev

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 19th, 2008 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Innovation, Science Digest / Science Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.