Cloaking a sensor via transformation optics

Biphysical undetectable concentrators manipulating both heat flux and direct current via topology optimization

Recent remarkable developments in metamaterials and metadevices manipulating diffusive processes, such as thermal and electrical conduction, have enabled the control of multiple phenomena and the development of multifunctional devices. However, only either multiphysics operations or multiple functionalities are usually implemented on single metadevices. In this paper, we describe a method for the optimal design of metadevices that achieves both cloaking and focusing in the control of both heat flux and direct current by a single device, i.e., biphysical-bifunctional metadevices having four capabilities. Our design scheme performs well in terms of providing cloaking and focusing bifunctionality. Additionally, it assumes bulk natural materials without the use of metamaterials, which improves the manufacturability of the designed metadevices. Moreover, multidirectional metad evices are optimally designed for thermal-electrical conductions transmitted from multiple directions or from heat and voltage sources at various locations.

Ultrabroadband 3D invisibility with fast-light cloaks

An invisibility cloak should completely hide an object from an observer, ideally across the visible spectrum and for all angles of incidence and polarizations of light, in three dimensions. However, until now, all such devices have been limited to either small bandwidths or have disregarded the phase of the impinging wave or worked only along specific directions. Here, we show that these seemingly fundamental restrictions can be lifted by using cloaks made of fast-light media, termed tachyonic cloaks, where the wave group velocity is larger than the speed of light in vacuum. On the basis of exact analytic calculations and full-wave causal simulations, we demonstrate three-dimensional cloaking that cannot be detected even interferometrically across the entire visible regime. Our results open the road for ultrabroadband invisibility of large objects, with direct implications for stealth and information technology, non-disturbing sensors, near-field scanning optical microscopy imaging, and superluminal propagation.

Three-dimensional invisibility cloaks are either limited in bandwidth or disregard the phase of the impinging wave or work only in specific directions. Here, the authors report that these restrictions can be lifted by using cloaks made of fast-light media where the wave group velocity is larger than the speed of light in vacuum.

Design of invisibility anti-cloak for two-dimensional arbitrary geometries

In this paper, we derive the material parameter formulae for designing an electromagnetic invisibility anti-cloak of two-dimensional arbitrary geometry, which is conformal with the cloaked object. Different shapes of electromagnetic invisibility anti-cloaks are proposed to verify the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed formulae. The simulation results show that the invisibility anti-cloak can break cloak shielding and make the external electromagnetic waves into the cloak. This is not only to realize the transfer of information, but will not affect the role of cloak of stealth.

Invisibility and cloaking based on scattering cancellation

Advances in material synthesis and in metamaterial technology offer new venues to tailor the electromagnetic properties of devices, which may go beyond conventional limits in a variety of fields and applications. Invisibility and cloaking are perhaps one of the most thought-provoking possibilities offered by these new classes of advanced materials. Here, recently proposed solutions for invisibility and cloaking using metamaterials, metasurfaces, graphene and/or plasmonic materials in different spectral ranges are reviewed and highlighted. The focus is primarily on scattering-cancellation approaches, describing material challenges, venues and opportunities for the plasmonic and the mantle cloaking techniques, applied to various frequency windows and devices. Analogies, potentials and relevant opportunities of these concepts are discussed, their potential realization and the underlying technology required to verify these phenomena are reviewed with an emphasis on the material aspects involved. Finally, these solutions are compared with other popular cloaking techniques.

Cloaked electromagnetic, acoustic, and quantum amplifiers via transformation optics

The advent of transformation optics and metamaterials has made possible devices producing extreme effects on wave propagation. Here we describe a class of invisible reservoirs and amplifiers for waves, which we refer to as Schrödinger hats. The unifying mathematical principle on which these are based admits such devices for any time harmonic waves modeled by either the Helmholtz or Schrödinger equation, e.g., polarized waves in electromagnetism, acoustical waves and matter waves in quantum mechanics. Schrödinger hats occupy one part of a parameter-space continuum of wave-manipulating structures which also contains standard transformation optics based cloaks, resonant cloaks and cloaked sensors. Possible applications include near-field quantum microscopy.

Cloaking a sensor for three-dimensional Maxwell's equations: transformation optics approach

The ideal transformation optics cloaking is accompanied by shielding: external observations do not provide any indication of the presence of a cloaked object, nor is any information about the fields outside detectable inside the cloaked region. In this paper, a transformation is proposed to cloak three-dimensional objects for electromagnetic waves in sensor mode, i.e., cloaking accompanied by degraded shielding. The proposed transformation tackles the difficulty caused by the fact that the lowest multipole in three-dimensional electromagnetic radiation is dipole rather than monopole. The loss of the surface impedance of the sensor plays an important role in determining the cloaking modes: ideal cloaking, sensor cloaking and resonance.