The Mathematics of Cloaking..December 26, 2006

[IGBT]

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Their analysis also revealed another surprise: a person trying to look out of the cloak would effectively be faced with a mirror in every direction. If you can imagine Harry Potter's own invisibility cloak working this way, and Harry turning on his flashlight to see, its light would shine right back at him, no matter where he pointed it.

Greenleaf's team determined that a more complicated phenomenon arises when using Maxwell's equations, leading to a "blow up" (an unexpected infinite behavior) of the electromagnetic fields. They determined that by inserting conductive linings, whose properties depend on the specific geometry of the cloak, this problem can be resolved. Alternatively, covering both the inside and outside surfaces of the cloaked region with carefully matched materials can also be used to bypass this problem.

 

[Born2bwire]

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Ugg... I hate trying to read papers written by mathematicians. Though I'm not surprised that they found largely different results between the Helmholtz and Maxwell solutions.

 

[ItTheCow]

Sweet. This might be interesting.

 

[PChang11]

I thought they already had something similar that uses small cameras and a cloak covered by a OLED screen that give a "Predator-like" look to the user.

 

[Never Knows Best]

I think it is interesting, but creating a cloak like James Bond car is probably never going to happen. What will probably come from this research is a way to focus or amplify photons of any frequency which would be very useful in realistic applications.

The predator style cloaking will probably come from OLEDS and a light sensitive cloth, or even more likely expanding molecules or synthetic orgrans for various colors with a light sensitive cloth. If you have seen the Metal Gear Solid 4 preview movies where the suit changes color slightly depending on what is near it, then you can imagine it.