In 2006, engineers from Duke University manufactured the first functional cloaking device, which worked moderately well, but reflected too much light to be completely undetectable. A member of that team has now improved the design and has created the most effective cloaking device to date.
The first iteration of the cloaking device weakened electromagnetic waves by reflecting some of the waves at the boundary of the device. Nathan Landy, a graduate student working with the same team from 2006, explained that it was like looking through a clear glass of water. One is able to look through the glass, but enough light is reflected by the glass to see it as well.
The cloaking device the team developed is divided into four quadrants, with most of the unwanted reflection occurring at the edges and corners where the quadrants meet. Landy discovered a way to reduce the amount of reflection by shifting each quadrant of the cloak so that it meets its mirror image at each interface, greatly improving its invisibility.
This new research in shaping the direction of light has lead to the emergence of a new field called transformational optics. This research could be applied to fibre optics, smoothing out the bends in fibre optic cables, which normally dampen the light wave data with each turn. The results from the Duke experiments were published online in the November 11 issue of Nature Materials.
Source: Science Daily
