The
Transformation Design Method and Metamaterials: Tools to Realize
Invisibility
and Other Interesting Effects
I will
explain how the transformation design method can yield a material
specification that possesses the same electromagnetic behavior as a
fairly general set of imagined space-time topologies. This method has
been used to design invisibility cloaks, but
the method is quite general and can be used to design a wide variety of
interesting devices that guide, concentrate or shape electromagnetic
fields in ways that would be difficult to manage with other design
methodologies. Applications range from stealth to energy conversion and
distribution to wireless communications
to biomedical imaging. The drawback of the method is the complexity of
the material specifications that it produces, which are in general
anisotropic and inhomogeneous.
Only with recent advances in the field of metamaterials can these
specifications be realized. I will discuss
how metamaterials accomplish this and what their limitations are, e.g.
bandwidth, loss, frequency range etc. I will discuss in detail the
recent implementation of an invisibility cloak in the microwave
spectrum.