New invisibility cloak to conceal objects in diffusive atmospheres
Researchers at the Public University of Navarre (NUP/UPNA) and the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) have come up with a new invisibility cloak capable of concealing objects in diffusive atmospheres, not just in direct light.
As Carlos García-Meca of the UPV's Centre for Nanophotonic Technology explained, diffusive environments are those in which the light is not propagated in a straight line, but bounces around. "To provide some cases closer to us, a diffusive environment would be what we find on a foggy day, in cloudy water or in a place with smoke, but also in our organic tissue. Our proposal establishes the basis to make a plane in the fog or a submarine in the sea undetectable," said García-Meca.
The NUP-UPNA and UPV researchers have conducted a simulation of this new invisibility cloak and will soon be working to build it in the lab. "It would be fairly straightforward, because all we would need is two different materials with a specific diffusivity; by playing around with them, we would be capable of producing the cloak that would cause the light to circulate around the object in such a way that the object would be hidden. We could achieve perfect invisibility; but only for diffusive atmospheres, of course," said lead researcher Bakhtiyar Orazbayev, who is conducting his work at the Public University of Navarre.
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