INVISIBLE CLOAK PERFECTED: Undergraduate Student Overcomes Major Hurdle to Invisibility Cloak

[Sorry, no image or photo...I mean really now, how do you photograph something that just isn't there...]

Published 10 August 2011

An undergraduate student has overcome a major hurdle in the development of invisibility cloaks by adding an optical device into their design which not only remains invisible itself, but also has the ability to slow down light; the innovation open up the possibility for a potential invisibility cloak wearer to move around amongst ever-changing backgrounds of a variety of colors

An undergraduate student has overcome a major hurdle in the development of invisibility cloaks by adding an optical device into their design which not only remains invisible itself, but also has the ability to slow down light.

The optical device, known as an “invisible sphere,” would slow down all of the light that approaches a potential cloak, meaning that the light rays would not need to be accelerated around the cloaked objects at great speeds — a requirement that has limited invisibility cloaks to work only in a specified region of the visible spectrum.

This new research, published 9 August in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society’s New Journal of Physics, could open up the possibility for a potential invisibility cloak wearer to move around amongst ever-changing backgrounds of a variety of colors.

Institute of Physics release reports that Hungarian-born Janos Perczel, who is studying Logic, Philosophy of Science, and Physics at the University of St Andrews and who works under the guidance of Professor Ulf Leonhardt, acknowledged the huge potential of the invisible sphere and was able to fine-tune it so that it was a suitable background for cloaking.