Smart materials offering great freedom in manipulating electromagnetic radiation have been developed. This exciting new concept was realized by Tie Jun Cui and co-workers at the Southeast University, China, who developed digital metamaterials consisting of two kinds of unit cells whose different phase responses allow them to act as ‘0’ and ‘1’ bits. These cells can be judiciously arranged in sequences to enable controlled manipulation of electromagnetic waves. This is one-bit coding; higher-bit coding is possible by employing more kinds of unit cells. The researchers developed a metamaterial cell whose binary response can be controlled by a biased diode. By using a field-programmable gate array, they demonstrated that this digital metamaterial can be programmed. Such metamaterials are attractive for controlling radiation beams in antennas and for realizing other ‘smart’ metamaterials.

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Coding metamaterials, digital metamaterials and programmable metamaterials

The arbitrary control of electromagnetic waves is a key aim of photonic research. Although, for example, the control of freely propagating waves (PWs) and surface waves (SWs) has separately become possible using transformation optics and metamaterials, a bridge linking both propagation types has not yet been found. Such a device has particular relevance given the many schemes of controlling electromagnetic waves at surfaces and interfaces, leading to trapped rainbows, lensing, beam bending, deflection, and even anomalous reflection/refraction. Here, we demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that a specific gradient-index meta-surface can convert a PW to a SW with nearly 100% efficiency. Distinct from conventional devices such as prism or grating couplers, the momentum mismatch between PW and SW is compensated by the reflection-phase gradient of the meta-surface, and a nearly perfect PW-SW conversion can happen for any incidence angle larger than a critical value. Experiments in the microwave region, including both far-field and near-field characterizations, are in excellent agreement with full-wave simulations. Our findings may pave the way for many applications, including high-efficiency surface plasmon couplers, anti-reflection surfaces, light absorbers, and so on.

http://www.physics.fudan.edu.cn/tps/people/lzhou/papers/84-NM%2011,426.pdf

Gradient-index meta-surfaces as a bridge linking propagating waves and surface waves

As artificial structures, metamaterials are usually described by macroscopic effective medium parameters, which are named as "analog metamaterials". Here, we propose "digital metamaterials" in two steps. Firstly, we present "coding metamaterials" that are composed of only two kinds of unit cells with 0 and {\pi} phase responses, which we name as "0" and "1" elements. By coding "0" and "1" elements with controlled sequences (i.e., 1-bit coding), we can manipulate electromagnetic (EM) waves and realize different functionalities. The concept of coding metamaterial can be extended from 1-bit coding to 2-bit or more. In 2-bit coding, four kinds of unit cells with phase responses 0, {\pi}/2, {\pi}, and 3{\pi}/2 are required to mimic "00", "01", "10" and "11" elements, which have larger freedom to control EM waves. Secondly, we propose a unique metamaterial particle which has either "0" or "1" response controlled by a biased diode. Based on the particle, we present "digital metamaterials" with unit cells having either "0" or "1" state. Using the field-programmable gate array, we realize to control the digital metamaterial digitally. By programming different coding sequences, a single digital metamaterial has distinct abilities in manipulating EM waves, realizing the "programming metamaterials". The above concepts and physical phenomena are confirmed by numerical simulations and experiments through metasurfaces.

Coding Metamaterials, Digital Metamaterials and Programming Metamaterials

The possibility of cloaking an object from detection by electromagnetic waves has recently become a topic of considerable interest. The design of a cloak uses transformation optics, in which a conformal coordinate transformation is applied to Maxwell's equations to obtain a spatially distributed set of constitutive parameters that define the cloak. Here, we present an experimental realization of a cloak design that conceals a perturbation on a flat conducting plane, under which an object can be hidden. To match the complex spatial distribution of the required constitutive parameters, we constructed a metamaterial consisting of thousands of elements, the geometry of each element determined by an automated design process. The ground-plane cloak can be realized with the use of nonresonant metamaterial elements, resulting in a structure having a broad operational bandwidth (covering the range of 13 to 16 gigahertz in our experiment) and exhibiting extremely low loss. Our experimental results indicate that this type of cloak should scale well toward optical wavelengths.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/323/5912/366.full.pdf

Broadband Ground-Plane Cloak

Invisibility devices have captured the human imagination for many years. Recent theories have proposed schemes for cloaking devices using transformation optics and conformal mapping. Metamaterials, with spatially tailored properties, have provided the necessary medium by enabling precise control over the flow of electromagnetic waves. Using metamaterials, the first microwave cloaking has been achieved but the realization of cloaking at optical frequencies, a key step towards achieving actual invisibility, has remained elusive. Here, we report the first experimental demonstration of optical cloaking. The optical 'carpet' cloak is designed using quasi-conformal mapping to conceal an object that is placed under a curved reflecting surface by imitating the reflection of a flat surface. The cloak consists only of isotropic dielectric materials, which enables broadband and low-loss invisibility at a wavelength range of 1,400-1,800 nm.

An optical cloak made of dielectrics

We study the design of arbitrarily shaped electromagnetic (EM) concentrators and their potential applications. To obtain closed-form formulas of EM parameters for an arbitrarily shaped concentrator, we employ nonuniform rational B-spline (NURBS) to represent the geometrical boundary. Using the conformally optical transformation of NURBS surfaces, we propose the analytical design of arbitrarily shaped concentrators, which are composed of anisotropic and inhomogeneous metamaterials with closed-form constitutive tensors. The designed concentrators are numerically validated by full-wave simulations, which show perfectly directed EM behaviors. As one of the potential applications, we demonstrate a way to amplify plane waves using a rectangular concentrator, which is much more efficient and easier than the existing techniques. Using NURBS expands the generality of the transformation optics and could lead toward making a very general tool that would interface with commercial softwares such as 3D STUDIOMAX and MAYA.

Design of arbitrarily shaped concentrators based on conformally optical transformation of nonuniform rational B-spline surfaces

An elliptical invisible cloak is proposed using a coordinate transformation in the elliptical-cylindrical coordinate system, which crushes the cloaked object to a line segment instead of a point. The elliptical cloak is reduced to a nearly circular cloak if the elliptical focus becomes very small. The advantage of the proposed invisibility cloak is that none of the parameters is singular and the changing range of all parameters is relatively small.

Invisibility cloak without singularity

An elliptical invisible cloak is proposed using a coordinate transformation in the elliptical-cylindrical coordinate system, which crushes the cloaked object to a line segment instead of a point. The elliptical cloak is reduced to a nearly-circular cloak if the elliptical focus becomes very small. The advantage of the proposed invisibility cloak is that none of the parameters is singular and the changing range of all parameters is relatively small.

A planar lens made of gradient index metamaterials can transform cylindrical waves to plane waves, and the beam direction of plane waves is controlled by adjusting the refractive-index distributions of the lens. Based on such properties, we present high-performance beam-scanning antennas experimentally using the gradient-index planar lens and horn antenna. The lens is carefully designed with metamaterials to achieve different refractive indices and good matching of impedance. The near-field distributions of antennas are measured using a two-dimensional near-field microwave scanning apparatus, and the radiation patterns are presented to show the high directivity and low sidelobe.

Experiments on high-performance beam-scanning antennas made of gradient-index metamaterials

Recently, invisible cloaks have attracted much attention due to their exciting property of invisibility, which are based on a solid theory of transformation optics and quasi-conformal mapping. Two kinds of cloaks have been proposed: free-space cloaks, which can render objects in free space invisible to incident radiation, and carpet cloaks (or ground-plane cloaks), which can hide objects under the conducting ground. The first free-space and carpet cloaks were realized in the microwave frequencies using metamaterials. The free-space cloak was composed of resonant metamaterials, and hence had restriction of narrow bandwidth and high loss; the carpet cloak was made of non-resonant metamaterials, which have broad bandwidth and low loss. However, the carpet cloak has a severe restriction of large size compared to the cloaked object. The above restrictions become the bottlenecks to the real applications of free-space and carpet cloaks. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of broadband and low-loss directive free-space cloak and compact-sized carpet cloak based on a recent theoretical study. Both cloaks are realized using non-resonant metamaterials in the microwave frequency, and good invisibility properties have been observed in experiments. This approach represents a major step towards the real applications of invisibility cloaks.

Xin Mi Yang

Papers

Design of arbitrarily shaped concentrators based on conformally optical transformation of nonuniform rational B-spline surfaces

Invisibility cloak without singularity

Invisibility cloak without singularity

Experiments on high-performance beam-scanning antennas made of gradient-index metamaterials

Compact-sized and broadband carpet cloak and free-space cloak.