A Clark School research team comprised of Visiting Research Scientist Igor Smolyaninov, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Christopher Davis, and graduate student Yu-Ju Hung, has created the world's first true invisibility cloak.
The new cloak is just 10 micrometers in diameter; by comparison, a human hair is between 50 to 100 micrometers wide. The cloak works by guiding rays of light around an object hidden inside and releasing the light rays on the other side. This causes the light waves to appear to have moved in a straight line, making the cloak and the object inside of it invisible.
The team's research has been covered by the media, including New Scientist, and a manuscript describing the research is available online at http://arxiv.org/abs/0709.2862. The research was also included in Discover Magazine's Top 100 science stories of 2007.
View a press release about this technology online.
December 18, 2007
clipped from www.eng.umd.edu
