Researchers hide 3D object with “plasmonic cloak”

Daily Mail : Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have succeeded in cloaking a three-dimensional object. According to their results published today in the New Journal of Physics, the group used plasmonic metamaterials to hide an 18-cm cylindrical tube illuminated by microwave radiation. Plasmonic metamaterials scatter light rays differently from the way more common materials do. “When the scattered fields from the cloak and the object interfere, they cancel each other out and the overall effect is transparency and invisibility at all angles of observation,” said Andrea Alù, one of the study’s coauthors. One of the next challenges will be to demonstrate cloaking in visible light.