The scientists have managed to come up with a technique that makes cylindrical and homogenous object invisible using an electromagnetic wave scattering. A team of physicists from ITMO University, Australian National University and the Ioffe Institute successfully carried out this experiment without using any coating of the metamaterial.
According to the prevailing notion, it is not possible to create any invisible object without the layering of the metamaterial. However, the scientists implemented their study of scattering of light to make the object invisible. The scientists used plain water for the study so that its refractive index can be easily regulated by changing its temperature.
The Dynamic Metamaterial
Media is always agog with news related to metamaterial as every time latest advancement in this field keep on surprising everyone. Metamaterials are the different minuscule elements that transmit, bend or scatter the electromagnetic radiations, which cannot be done by any known natural material.
The property of metamaterial to route the light around the objects and make them invisible to the naked eye has made this material quite famous. But it certainly does not work like the invisibility cloak in the Harry Potter fiction. The researchers are trying hard to make the cloaking like invisibility using the metamaterial a reality. However, they have not been much successful in developing such capabilities despite, ample funding from the military bases.
Scattering Mechanisms to Achieve Invisibility
The recent achievement of making a homogeneous object invisible has opened doors to more such possibilities in the future. This newly developed technique was based on the association of two scattering mechanisms with the higher refractive index. The interaction between these two mechanisms-resonant and non-resonant led to the development of Fano resonances.
When the waves of certain frequencies scatter, non-resonant and resonant mechanisms with opposite phases are mutually destroyed making the object invisible. From the engineering point of view, the discovery of this invisibility phenomenon can contribute in the further developments related to nanoantennas.
