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Thursday, January 11, 2007

Invisibility: Mathematically possible

November 30, 2006: The invisibility cloak recently built by scientists at Duke University and Imperial College in London has received enormous attention all over the world. This breakthrough cloaking device makes a copper disk invisible at specific microwave frequencies. As it turns out, Mathematics Professor Allan Greenleaf of the University of Rochester along with Matti Lassas, who is now at the Helsinki University of Technology, and Gunther Uhlmann of the University of Washington, started the mathematics behind invisibility several years ago in the context of medical imaging and quantum mechanics. Joined by fourth member Yaroslav Kurylev of Loughborough University, the team has announced the mathematics of full-wave invisibility at all frequencies (http://www.arxiv.org/abs/math.AP/0611185). In their latest work, they examine the problem of cloaking not just passive objects, but also active devices that are emitting electromagnetic waves, and show that this requires modifying the original constructions.

(hat tip: Ilachina)

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