Rendered images seen by the virtual camera (a) Metallic floor with no bump (b) Metallic floor with a bump whose edges are outlined in green, and (c) the bump with the cloaking structure added and the top of the cloaking structure with a reference index of unity outlined in red
Over the last few years we’ve covered the development of “invisibility cloaks” using metamaterials – man-made structured composite materials exhibiting optical properties not found in nature that can guide light to achieve cloaking and other optical effects. In 2006, scientists at Duke University demonstrated in the laboratory that an object made of metamaterials can be partially invisible to particular wavelengths of light - not visible light, but rather microwaves. A few groups have even managed to achieve a microscopically-sized carpet-cloak. Now researchers have developed software that can show what such a cloaked object will actually look like.