Metamaterials : The Power of Negative Thinking

Boosted by the advent of nanotechnology, opticists have 
managed to create materials that have drastically changed our beliefs 
towards routine optical phenomena. For instance, photonic crystals 
allow us to control the flow of light, stop it, store it, or bend it 
around sharp turns without loss. Plasmonic materials can transmit 
optical signals through regions much smaller than its wavelength, 
assisted by electronic oscillations called plasmons. In recent times, 
another category of such materials, called Metamaterials, has revealed 
several astounding optical effects, most notable among them being the 
negative refraction of light and invisibility cloaking. Using these 
meta-materials, it is now possible to send light into a no-entry zone, 
make it turn around objects and focus it into regions much smaller 
than earlier reckoned possible. Such materials have immense 
technological applications ranging from the medical to the military. 
In this talk, I shall introduce the fundamentals of metamaterials. 
After giving a brief history of their evolution, I shall discuss a few 
relevant phenomena like negative refraction, superlensing, 
hyperlensing and invisibility cloaking.