Macroscopic invisibility cloaking of visible light.
Macroscopic invisibility cloaking of visible light.
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DOI：
10.1038/ncomms1176
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发表时间：
2011-02-01
影响因子：
16.6
通讯作者：
Zhang S
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Chen X;Luo Y;Zhang J;Jiang K;Pendry JB;Zhang S
隐形斗篷，这曾经是局限于小说的领域，现在已经变成了一个科学的现实，这要归功于转换光学和保角映射的理论工具。在这些理论工作的启发下，已经报道了在各种电磁频率下电磁隐身衣的实验实现。然而，迄今为止展示的所有隐形斗篷都依赖于具有空间变化电磁特性的纳米或微米制造的人造复合材料，这将隐形区域的大小限制在几个波长内。在这里，我们报告的第一个实现的宏观体积隐形斗篷构造的天然双折射晶体。这种隐形衣在可见光频率下工作，对于特定的光偏振，能够隐藏厘米和毫米尺度的三维物体。我们的工作为宏观隐身设备的未来应用开辟了途径。到目前为止，隐形斗篷只覆盖了几个波长的区域，因为它们的纳米结构材料。Chen等人描述了一种由方解石双折射晶体制成的宏观斗篷，它在可见光波长下工作于特定的偏振。
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. Until now, invisibility cloaks have only covered a region of a few wavelengths because of their nanostructured materials. Chen et al. describe a macroscopic cloak, made of calcite birefringent crystals, which works for a specific polarization at visible wavelengths.