Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences - PIMS

Cloaking Light and Sound

Recent work has shown that one physical interpretation of the
coordinate transformation invariance of Maxwell's equations can be
expressed as an electromagnetic material with transformed permittivity
and permeability values defined in the original coordinates [Pendry et
al., Science, 2006]. This means that the bending and stretching of
electromagnetic fields specified by coordinate transformations can be
implemented with specific electromagnetic materials, enabling unexpected
and interesting solutions such as electromagnetic cloaking. Building on
this idea, we have recently shown, through several different approaches,
how this same concept can be extended to realize arbitrary manipulations
of acoustic waves, including cloaking, using materials with specific
properties determined by the coordinate transformation. This
presentation will summarize the related concepts of transformation
optics and transformation acoustics and will describe approaches for
engineering composite materials with the properties needed to realize,
in practice, the applications that can be imagined with this concept.

2:30pm, Rm. 8500, TASC II