Description |
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.
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