School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.
Nat Commun. 2011 Feb 1;2:176. doi: 10.1038/ncomms1176.
Invisibility cloaks, which used to be confined to the realm of fiction, have now been turned into a scientific reality thanks to the enabling theoretical tools of transformation optics and conformal mapping. Inspired by those theoretical works, the experimental realization of electromagnetic invisibility cloaks has been reported at various electromagnetic frequencies. All the invisibility cloaks demonstrated thus far, however, have relied on nano- or micro-fabricated artificial composite materials with spatially varying electromagnetic properties, which limit the size of the cloaked region to a few wavelengths. Here, we report the first realization of a macroscopic volumetric invisibility cloak constructed from natural birefringent crystals. The cloak operates at visible frequencies and is capable of hiding, for a specific light polarization, three-dimensional objects of the scale of centimetres and millimetres. Our work opens avenues for future applications with macroscopic cloaking devices.
隐形斗篷曾一度只存在于虚构作品中,现在由于变换光学和共形映射等理论工具的出现,已经成为了科学现实。受这些理论工作的启发,人们已经在不同的电磁频率下实现了电磁隐形斗篷的实验。然而,迄今为止所有展示的隐形斗篷都依赖于具有空间变化电磁特性的纳米或微制造人工复合材料,这将隐形区域的尺寸限制在几个波长内。在这里,我们报告了第一个由天然双折射晶体构建的宏观体积隐形斗篷的实现。该斗篷在可见光频率下工作,能够隐藏特定光偏振的厘米和毫米尺度的三维物体。我们的工作为未来使用宏观隐形装置开辟了道路。