Invisibility cloaks of light, which used to be confined to the imagination, 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 realisation 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 realisation of a macroscopic volumetric invisibility cloak constructed from natural birefringent crystals. The cloak operates at visible frequencies and is capable of hiding three-dimensional objects of the scale of centimetres and millimetres. Our work opens avenues for future applications with macroscopic cloaking devices.
Conventional cloaking based on Euclidean transformation optics requires that the speed of light should tend to infinity on the inner surface of the cloak. Non-Euclidean cloaking still needed media with superluminal propagation. Here we show by giving an example that this is no longer necessary.
We investigate, both theoretically and numerically, a graphene-coated nano-cylinder illuminated by a plane electromagnetic wave in THz range of frequencies. We have derived an analytical formula that enables fast evaluation of the spectral window with a substantial reduction in scattering efficiency for sufficiently thin cylinder. This effect leads to tunable resonant invisibility that can be achieved via modification of graphene chemical potential monitored by the gate voltage. A multi-frequency cloaking mechanism based on dimer coated nanowires is also discussed.
Cloaking of Arbitrarily Shaped Large-Scale Objects Through the Injection of Electromagnetic Invisibility Genes
Key Lab of Advanced Transducers and Intelligent Control System, Ministry of Education and Shanxi Province, College of Physics and Optoelectronics, Taiyuan University of Technology（先进换能器与智能控制系统重点实验室（教育部和山西省），物理与光电工程学院，太原理工大学）；The Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University（电子系统系，奥尔堡大学）
Coordinate-transformation approaches to invisibility cloaking rely on the design of an anisotropic, spatially inhomogeneous "transformation medium" capable of suitably re-routing the energy flux around the region to conceal without causing any scattering in the exterior region. It is well known that the inherently magnetic properties of such medium limit the high-frequency scaling of practical "metamaterial" implementations based on subwavelength inclusions (e.g., split-ring resonators). Thus, for the optical range, non-magnetic implementations, based on approximate reductions of the constitut…
Invisibility cloaking not only catches the human imagination, but also promises fascinating applications in optics and photonics. By manipulating electromagnetic waves with metamaterials, researchers have been able to realize electromagnetic cloaking in the microwave, terahertz and optical regimes. Nevertheless, the complex design and fabrication process, narrow bandwidth, and high intrinsic losses in the metamaterial-based cloaks have imposed intractable limitations on their realistic applications. Seeking new approaches to overcome these perceived disadvantages is in progress. Here by using …
Invisibility cloaking imposes strict conditions on the refractive index profiles of cloaking media that must be satisfied to successfully hide an object. The first experimental demonstrations of cloaking used artificial metamaterials to respond to this challenge. In this work we show how a much simpler technique of electromagnetically induced transparency can be used to achieve a partial, {\it carpet} cloaking at optical frequencies in atomic vapours or solids. To generate a desired combination of low absorption with strong modifications of the refractive index, we use chiral media with an ind…
We demonstrate in this letter a unique approach for watching outside while hiding in a carpet cloaking based on transformation optics. Unlike conventional carpet cloaking, which screens all the incident electromagnetic waves, we break the cloak and allow incident light get into the carpet. Hence outside information is detected inside the cloak. To recover the invisible cloaking, complementary techniques are applied in the broken space. Consequently, a hiding-inside-and-watching-outside (HIWO) carpet cloak is sewed, which works as a perfectly invisible cloaking and allows surveillance of the ou…
The key challenge in current research into electromagnetic cloaking is to achieve invisibility over an extended bandwidth. There has been significant progress towards this using the idea of cloaking by sweeping under the carpet of Li and Pendry, with dielectric structures superposed on a mirror. Here, we show that we can harness surface plasmon polaritons at a metal surface structured with a dielectric material to obtain a unique control of their propagation. We exploit this to control plasmonic coupling and demonstrate both theoretically and experimentally cloaking over an unprecedented bandw…
We investigate two-dimensional invisibility cloaking via transformation optics approach. The cloaking media possess much more singular parameters than those having been considered for three-dimensional cloaking in literature. Finite energy solutions for these cloaking devices are studied in appropriate weighted Sobolev spaces. We derive some crucial properties of the singularly weighted Sobolev spaces. The invisibility cloaking is then justified by decoupling the underlying singular PDEs into one problem in the cloaked region and the other one in the cloaking layer. We derive some completely n…
Transformation optics, a recent geometrical design strategy of controlling light by combining Maxwell's principles of electromagnetism with Einstein's general relativity, promises without precedent an invisibility cloaking device that can render a macroscopic object invisible in three dimensions. However, most previous proof-of-concept transformation-optics cloaking devices focused predominantly on two dimensions, whereas detection of a macroscopic object along its third dimension was always unfailing. Here, we report the first experimental demonstration of transformation-optics macroscopic vi…
Subwavelength structures demonstrate many unusual optical properties which can be employed for engineering functional metadevices, as well as scattering of light and invisibility cloaking. Here we demonstrate that the suppression of light scattering for any direction of observation can be achieved for an uniform dielectric object with high refractive index, in a sharp contrast to the cloaking with multilayered plasmonic structures suggested previously. Our finding is based on the novel physics of cascades of Fano resonances observed in the Mie scattering from a homogeneous dielectric rod. We o…
Two novel classes of spherical invisibility cloaks based on nonlinear transformation have been studied. The cloaking characteristics are presented by segmenting the nonlinear transformation based spherical cloak into concentric isotropic homogeneous coatings. Detailed investigations of the optimal discretization (e.g., thickness control of each layer, nonlinear factor, etc.) are presented for both linear and nonlinear spherical cloaks and their effects on invisibility performance are also discussed. The cloaking properties and our choice of optimal segmentation are verified by the numerical si…
Recent theoretical advances applied to metamaterials have opened new avenues to design a coating that hides objects from electromagnetic radiation and even the sight. Here, we propose a new design of cloaking devices that creates perfect invisibility in isotropic media. A combination of positive and negative refractive indices, called plus-minus construction, is essential to achieve perfect invisibility (i.e., no time delay and total absence of reflection). Contrary to the common understanding that between two isotropic materials having different refractive indices the electromagnetic reflecti…
We show that it is possible to design an invisible wavelength-sized metal-dielectric metamaterial object without evoking cloaking. Our approach is an extension of the neutral inclusion concept by Zhou and Hu [Phys.Rev.E 74, 026607 (2006)] to Mie scatterers. We demonstrate that an increase of metal fraction in the metamaterial leads to a transition from dielectric-like to metal-like scattering, which proceeds through invisibility or optical neutrality of the scatterer. Formally this is due to cancellation of multiple scattering orders, similarly to plasmonic cloaking introduced by Alu and Enghe…
The design rules of transformation optics generally lead to spatially inhomogeneous and anisotropic impedance-matched magneto-dielectric material distributions for, e.g., free-space invisibility cloaks. Recently, simplified anisotropic non-magnetic free-space cloaks made of a locally uniaxial dielectric material (calcite) have been realized experimentally. In a two-dimensional setting and for in-plane polarized light propagating in this plane, the cloaking performance can still be perfect for light rays. However, for general views in three dimensions, various imperfections are expected. In thi…
The invisibility cloak has been a long-standing dream for many researchers over the decades. The introduction of transformational optics has revitalized this field by providing a general method to design material distributions to hide the subject from detection. By transforming space and light propagation, a three-dimensional (3D) object is perceived as having a reduced number of dimensions, in the form of points, lines, and thin sheets, making it "undetectable" judging from the scattered field. Although a variety of cloaking devices have been reported at microwave and optical frequencies, the…
Transformation optics is a design tool that connects geometry of space and propagation of light. Invisibility cloaking is a corresponding benchmark example. Recent experiments at optical frequencies have demonstrated cloaking for the light amplitude ("ray cloaking"). In this Letter, we demonstrate far-field cloaking of the light phase ("wave cloaking") by interferometric microscope-imaging experiments on the previously introduced three-dimensional carpet cloak at 700-nm wavelength and for arbitrary polarization of light.
Is it possible to actually make Harry's invisibility cloaks? The most promising approach for realizing such magical cloaking in our real world would be to use transformation optics, where an empty space with a distorted geometry is imitated with a non-distorted space but filled with transformation medium having appropriate permittivity and permeability. An important requirement for true invisibility cloaks is nonreciprocity; that is, a person in the cloak should not be seen from the outside but should be able to see the outside. This invisibility cloak, or a nonreciprocal shield, cannot be cre…
Considered to only exist in the fairy tales in the past, invisibility cloaks have been successively converted into reality no matter in the spatial domain or temporal domain. Inspired by the spatial cloaking, time gaps are utilized to hide temporal events. However, a sophisticated synchronization for cloaking is indispensable in these cloaking techniques, therefore leaving inconvenience for the realization of the temporal cloak. Here, by exploiting temporal Talbot effect, we propose a brand new scheme and concept to achieve a temporal cloak without any synchronization for cloaking process, und…
We outline a general method of constructing finite-range cloaking potentials which render a given finite-range real or complex potential $v(x)$ unidirectionally reflectionless or invisible at a wavenumber $k_0$ of our choice. We give explicit analytic expressions for three classes of cloaking potentials which achieve this goal while preserving some or all of the other scattering properties of $v(x)$. The cloaking potentials we construct are the sum of up to three constituent unidirectionally invisible potentials. We also discuss their application in making $v(x)$ bidirectionally invisible at $…
We propose multilayer cylindrical invisibility cloaks that are optimized for oblique incidences through combination of analytic formalism of scattering and genetic optimization. We show that by using only four layers of homogeneous and anisotropic metamaterials without large values of constitutive parameters, the scattering for oblique incidences can be reduced by two orders. Although the optimization is done at a single incident angle, the cloak provides reduced scattering over a large range of incident angles.
The invisibility cloak has been a long-standing dream for many researchers over the decades. By transforming space and light propagation, a three-dimensional (3D) object can be perceived as having reduced number of dimensions, in the form of points, lines, and thin sheets, making it "undetectable" judging from scattered field. Although a variety of cloaking devices have been reported at microwave and optical frequencies, the Terahertz (THz) domain remains unexplored. Moreover, it should be noted that all the previous experimental demonstrations are performed in a two-dimensional (2D) waveguide…
Invisibility or cloaking has captured human's imagination for many years. With the recent advancement of metamaterials, several theoretical proposals show cloaking of objects is possible, however, so far there is a lack of an experimental demonstration at optical frequencies. Here, we report the first experimental realization of a dielectric optical cloak. The cloak is designed using quasi-conformal mapping to conceal an object that is placed under a curved reflecting surface which imitates the reflection of a flat surface. Our cloak consists only of isotropic dielectric materials which enable…
We report on a new concept of cloaking objects in diffusive light regime using the paradigm of the scattering cancellation and mantle cloaking techniques. We show numerically that an object can be made completely invisible to diffusive photon density waves, by tailoring the diffusivity constant of the spherical shell enclosing the object. This means that photons' flow outside the object and the cloak made of these spherical shells behaves as if the object were not present. Diffusive light invisibility may open new vistas in hiding hot spots in infrared thermography or tissue imaging.
Invisibility cloak is drawing much attention due to its special camouflage when exposed to physical field varing from wave (electromagnetic field, acoustic field, elastic wave, etc.) to scalar field (thermal field, static magnetic field, dc electric field and mass diffusion). Here, an electrostatic field invisibility cloak has been theoretically investigated, and experimentally demonstrated for the first time to perfectly hide a certain region from sight without disturbing the external electrostatic field. The desired cloaking effect has been achieved via both scattering cancelling technology …
As a probe to explore the ability of invisibility cloaks to conceal objects in the quantum mechanics domain, we study the spontaneous emission rate of an excited two-level atom in the vicinity of an ideal invisibility cloaking. On this base, first, a canonical quantization scheme is presented for the electromagnetic field interacting with atomic systems in an anisotropic, inhomogeneous and absorbing magnetodielectric medium which can suitably be used for studying the influence of arbitrary invisibility cloak on the atomic radiative properties. The time dependence of the atomic subsystem is obt…
An analytical method of electromagnetic wave interactions with a general radially anisotropic cloak is established. It is able to deal with arbitrary parameters ($ε_r(r)$, $μ_r(r)$, $ε_t(r)$ and $μ_t(r)$) of a radially anisotropic inhomogeneous shell. The general cloaking condition is proposed from the wave relations for the first time. We derive the parameters of a novel class of spherical nonlinear cloaks and examine its invisibility performance by the proposed method at various nonlinear situations. Spherical metamaterial cloaks with improved invisibility performance is achieved with optima…
Invisibility cloaks, a subject that usually occurs in science fiction and myths, have attracted wide interest recently because of their possible realization. The biggest challenge to true invisibility is known to be the cloaking of a macroscopic object in the broad range of wavelengths visible to the human eye. Here we experimentally solve this problem by incorporating the principle of transformation optics into a conventional optical lens fabrication with low-cost materials and simple manufacturing techniques. A transparent cloak made of two pieces of calcite is created. This cloak is able to…
We consider an ideal invisibility cloak which is illuminated by monochromatic light and which moves in vacuum at constant relativistic velocity with respect to the common inertial frame of light source and observer. We show that, in general, the moving cloak becomes detectable by image distortions and by generating a broad frequency spectrum of the scattered light. However, for many special combinations of incident light frequency, wave vector of light, and cloak velocity, ideal cloaking remains possible. It becomes non-reciprocal though. This means that light rays emitted by the light source …
We give a comprehensive study on regularized approximate electromagnetic cloaking via the transformation optics approach. The following aspects are investigated: (i) near-invisibility cloaking of passive media as well as active/radiating sources; (ii) the existence of cloak- busting inclusions without lossy medium lining; (iii) overcoming the cloaking-busts by employing a lossy layer outside the cloaked region; (iv) the frequency dependence of the cloaking performances. We address these issues and connect the obtained asymptotic results to singular ideal cloaking. Numerical verifications and d…
The intriguing concept of "anti-cloaking" has been recently introduced within the framework of transformation optics (TO), first as a "countermeasure" to invisibility-cloaking (i.e., to restore the scattering response of a cloaked target), and more recently in connection with "sensor invisibility" (i.e., to strongly reduce the scattering response while maintaining the field-sensing capabilities). In this paper, we extend our previous studies, which were limited to a two-dimensional cylindrical scenario, to the three-dimensional spherical case. More specifically, via a generalized (coordinate-m…
Non-Euclidean geometry combined with transformation optics has recently led to the proposal of an invisibility cloak that avoids optical singularities and therefore can work, in principle, in a broad band of the spectrum [U. Leonhardt and T. Tyc, Science 323, 110 (2009)]. Such a cloak is perfect in the limit of geometrical optics, but not in wave optics. Here we analyze, both analytically and numerically, full wave propagation in non-Euclidean cloaking. We show that the cloaking device performs remarkably well even in a regime beyond geometrical optics where the device is comparable in size wi…
The coordinate transformation offers a remarkable way to design cloaks that can steer electromagnetic fields so as to prevent waves from penetrating into the {\em cloaked region} (denoted by $Ω_0$, where the objects inside are invisible to observers outside). The ideal circular and elliptic cylindrical cloaked regions are blown up from a point and a line segment, respectively, so the transformed material parameters and the corresponding coefficients of the resulted equations are highly singular at the cloaking boundary $\partial Ω_0$. The electric field or magnetic field is not continuous acro…
It was recently shown [Halimeh et al. arXiv:1510.06144 (to appear in Phys. Rev. A)] that as a result of the Doppler effect, inherently dispersive single-frequency ideal free-space invisibility cloaks in relative motion to an observer can only cloak light whose frequency in the cloak frame coincides with the operational frequency of the cloak, although an infinite number of such rays exist for any cloak motion. In this article, we show analytically and through ray-tracing simulations that even though this relationship can be relaxed by simplifying the ideal invisibility cloak into a broadband a…
As invisibility cloaking has recently become experimental reality, it is interesting to explore ways to reveal remaining imperfections. In essence, the idea of most invisibility cloaks is to recover the optical path lengths without an object (to be made invisible) by a suitable arrangement around that object. Optical path length is proportional to the time of flight of a light ray or to the optical phase accumulated by a light wave. Thus, time-of-flight images provide a direct and intuitive tool for probing imperfections. Indeed, recent phase-sensitive experiments on the carpet cloak have alre…
In this paper, transformation optics is presented together with a generalization of invisibility cloaking: instead of an empty region of space, an inhomogeneous structure is transformed via Pendry's map in order to give, to any object hidden in the central hole of the cloak, a completely arbitrary appearance. Other illusion devices based on superlenses considered from the point of view of transformation optics are also discussed.
In this paper, we present an efficient spectral-element method (SEM) for solving general two-dimensional Helmholtz equations in anisotropic media, with particular applications in accurate simulation of polygonal invisibility cloaks, concentrators and circular rotators arisen from the field of transformation electromagnetics (TE). In practice, we adopt a transparent boundary condition (TBC) characterized by the Dirichlet-to-Neumann (DtN) map to reduce wave propagation in an unbounded domain to a bounded domain. We then introduce a semi-analytic technique to integrate the global TBC with local c…
Engineered core-shell cylinders are good candidates for applications in invisibility and cloaking.In particular, hyperbolic nanotubes demonstrate tunable ultra-low scattering cross section in the visible spectral range. In this work we investigate the limits of validity of the condition for invisibility, which was shown to rely on reaching an epsilon near zero in one of the components of the effective permittivity tensor of the anisotropic metamaterial cavity. For incident light polarized perpendicularly to the scatterer axis, critical deviations are found in low-birefringent arrangements and …
The concept of an invisibility cloak is a fixture of science fiction, fantasy, and the collective imagination. However, a real device that could hide an object from sight in visible light from absolutely any viewpoint would be extremely challenging to build. The main obstacle to creating such a cloak is the coupling of the electromagnetic components of light, which would necessitate the use of complex materials with specific permittivity and permeability tensors. Previous cloaking solutions have involved circumventing this obstacle by functioning either in static (or quasi-static) fields where…
We present the design, fabrication and performance test of a quasi three-dimensional carpet cloak made of normal dielectric in the microwave regime. Taking advantage of a simple linear coordinate transformation we design a carpet cloak with homogeneous anisotropic medium and then practically realize the device with multilayer of alternating normal dielectric slabs based on the effective medium theory. As a proof-of-concept example, we fabricate the carpet cloak with multilayer of FR4 dielectric slabs with air spacing. The performance of the fabricated design is verified through full-wave numer…
The straightforward method of transformation optics implies that one starts from the coordinate transformation, determines the Jacobian matrix, the fields and material parameters of the cloak. However, the coordinate transformation appears as an optional function: it is not necessary to know it. We offer the solution of some sort of the inverse problem: starting from the fields in the invisibility cloak we directly derive the permittivity and permeability tensors of the cloaking shell. The approach can be useful for finding material parameters for the specified electromagnetic fields in the cl…
Recently, it was demonstrated that active sources can be used to cloak any objects that lie outside the cloaking devices [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{103}, 073901 (2009)]. Here, we propose that active sources can create illusion effects, so that an object outside the cloaking device can be made to look like another object. invisibility is a special case in which the concealed object is transformed to a volume of air. From a boundary element perspective, we show that active sources can create a nearly "silent" domain which can conceal any objects inside and at the same time make the whole system l…
Acoustic cloaking for the suppression of backscattering inside ducts is proposed in the audible range where plane waves are curved around the object using the surface modes of the liner. It is numerically shown that a slowly varying resonant liner (e. g. based on an array of tubes) creates a zone of silence in which an object of arbitrary shape can be acoustically hidden for a wide range of frequencies. And then, a resonant liner has deflecting properties without reflection of the wavefront, which are close to an ideal invisibility cloak. This kind of cloaking is effective in a wide frequency …
Breaking the trade-off between invisibility and sensitivity in electromagnetic sensing
Key Lab of Advanced Transducers and Intelligent Control System, Ministry of Education and Shanxi Province, College of Physics and Optoelectronics, Taiyuan University of Technology（太原理工学院物理与光电工程学院）
Electromagnetic wave behaviour in an anisotropic medium with a two dimensional arbitrary geometry is studied. The aim is to trace the path of a ray in such a complex medium for the purpose of achieving cloaking (invisibility). A coordinate transformation is carried out for the formulation of an annular region at the centre of the structure whose topology is a scaled geometry of outer boundary of the structure.
While practical realizations of optical invisibility have been achieved so far by various ingenious methods, they generally rely on complex materials which prevent the wide implementation of such schemes. Here, we propose an alternative indivisibility procedure to design objects (i.e. self-cloaked structures) that have optical properties identical to the surrounding environment and are, thereby, intrinsically invisible to an external observer as such (without the necessity of an external cloak). The proposed method is based on the uncoupling of the scattered waves from the incident radiation b…
An inverse way to define the parameters of ideal cylindrical cloaks is developed, in which the interconnection between the parameters is revealed for the first time without knowing a specific coordinate transformation. The required parameters are derived in terms of the integral form of cloaking generators, which is very general and allows us to examine the significance of the parametric profiles. The validity of such inverse way and the invisibility characteristics are presented in full-wave numerical simulation of plane wave scattering by cloaked cylinders.
Metamaterials have paved the way to unprecedented control of the electromagnetic field1,2. The conjunction with space coordinate transformation has led to a novel "relativity inspired" approach for the control of light propagation. "Invisibility cloak" is the most fascinating proposed devices3,4. However, the realized structures up to now used a graded "metamagnetic" so as to achieve the cloaking function11. Artificial magnetism is however still very challenging to obtain in optics despite the currently promising building blocks13-17, not suited for optical cloaking. We report here the first e…
