Are Invisibility Cloaks Hiding Around the Corner?

Elena Semouchkina and colleagues are experimenting with ways of using magnetic resonance to capture rays of visible light and route them around objects, rendering those objects invisible to the human eye. They designed a nonmetallic “invisibility cloak” that uses concentric arrays of identical glass resonators made of chalcogenide glass, a type of dielectric material–that is, one that does not conduct electricity. In computer simulations, the cloak made objects hit by infrared waves–approximately one micron, or one-millionth of a meter long–disappear from view.

The potential practical applications of the work could be dramatic, for example, in the military, such as “making objects invisible to radar,” she said, as well as in intelligence operations “to conceal people or objects.”

Furthermore, “shielding objects from electromagnetic irradiation is also very important,” she said, adding, “for sure, the gaming industry could use it in new types of toys.”

Multi-resonator structures comprising Semouchkina’s invisibility cloak belong to “metamaterials”–artificial materials with properties that do not exist in nature–since they can refract light by unusual ways. In particular, the “spokes” of tiny glass resonators accelerate light waves around the object making it invisible.

Metamaterials use lattices of resonators, instead of atoms or molecules of natural materials, and provide for a broad range of relative permittivity and permeability including zero and negative values in the vicinity of the resonance frequency, she said. Metamaterials were listed as one of the top three physics discoveries of the decade by the American Physical Society.

“Metamaterials were initially made of metallic split ring resonators and wire arrays that limited both their isotropy (uniformity in all directions) and frequency range,” Semouchkina said. “Depending on the size of split ring resonators, they could operate basically at microwaves and millimeter (mm) waves.”

In 2004, her research group proposed replacing metal resonators with dielectric resonators. “Although it seemed strange to control magnetic properties of a metamateral by using dielectrics, we have shown that arrays of dielectric resonators can provide for negative refraction and other unique properties of metamaterials,” she said. “Low loss dielectric resonators promise to extend applications of metamaterials to the optical range, and we have demonstrated this opportunity by designing an infrared cloak.”

She and her team now are testing an all-dielectric invisibility cloak rescaled to work at microwave frequencies, performing experiments in Michigan Tech’s anechoic chamber, a cave-like compartment in an electrical energy resources center lab, lined with highly absorbent charcoal-gray foam cones.

There, “horn” antennas transmit and receive microwaves with wavelengths up to several centimeters, that is, more than 10,000 times longer than in the infrared range. They are cloaking metal cylinders two to three inches in diameter and three to four inches high with a shell comprised of mm-sized ceramic resonators, she said.

“We want to move experiments to higher frequencies and smaller wavelengths,” she said, adding: “The most exciting applications will be at the frequencies of visible light.”

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