Transformation Optics and the Geometry of Light
By Ulf Leonhardt, T. Philbin. 2008
397 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Metamaterials are beginning to transform optics and microwave technology thanks to their versatile properties that, in many cases, can be tailored according to practical needs and desires. Although metamaterials are surely not the answer to all engineering problems, they have inspired a series of significant technological developments and also some imaginative research, because they invite researchers and inventors to dream. Imagine there were no practical limits on the electromagnetic properties of materials. What is possible? And what is not? If there are no practical limits, what are the fundamental limits? Such questions inspire taking a fresh look at the foundations of optics and at connections between optics and other areas of physics. In this article we discuss such a connection, the relationship between optics and general relativity, or, expressed more precisely, between geometrical ideas normally applied in general relativity and the propagation of light, or electromagnetic waves in general, in materials. We also discuss how this connection is applied: in invisibility devices, perfect lenses, the optical Aharonov-Bohm effect of vortices and in analogues of the event horizon.
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Civil and Structural Engineering, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/df199faab177129f7f1d0853e4c0b34ba14832ea
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
In Civil and Structural Engineering
In Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
Citations in the corpus
- Conformal transformation optics (2014, background): “The refractive index distribution can be calculated by equations (2) and (5).”
- Carroll versus Newton and Galilei: two dual non-Einsteinian concepts of time (2014, background): “One picks the Lorentzian metric whose null geodesics one wishes light rays to follow and reads off the properties of the metamaterials that are required [52].”