Plasmonic and Metamaterial Cloaking: Fundamental Principles, Salient Features and Future Trends

Abstract

The quest for miniaturizing and optimizing the performance of electromagnetic devices for numerous applications (wireless and optical communications, imaging ...) has fostered in recent years a strong interest in artificial materials, metamaterials and plasmonics, whose exciting and anomalous electromagnetic properties may overcome certain limitations of the current technologies. One of the
most striking properties of these materials is the possibility of drastically reducing the visibility (electromagnetic scattering) of an object.

In this talk, I will provide an overview of our original technique that employs metamaterials and plasmonic layers to envision efficient cloaks. After giving an overview of the current state of the art in the fields of metamaterials and plasmonics, I will show how the visibility of an object may be drastically reduced by surrounding it with suitably designed metamaterial and/or plasmonic cloaks.
These concepts are applied to dielectric and conducting objects, multiple particles, multi-frequency operation, realistic loss and frequency dispersion, and presence of reflectors and other objects. I will discuss several potential applications of these cloaks, from camouflaging and scattering reduction to non-invasive probing and efficient energy extraction, spanning frequencies that go from the microwaves to the visible.

Speaker Biography

Andrea Alu is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. He received the laurea (MS) degree in electronic engineering, the MS degree in environmental engineering and the PhD degree in biomedical electronics, electromagnetics and telecommunications from the University of Roma Tre, Rome, Italy, respectively in 2001, 2003 and 2007. Since 2002 he has been periodically
working in Prof. Engheta's group at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA., where he has also developed significant parts of his PhD research.

He is the co-author of over 70 scientific papers in books and peer-reviewed journals and over 150 papers or abstracts in international conference proceedings. He regularly serves as reviewer for IEEE, IET, OSA, APS and loP Journals and IEEE Transactions related to electrical engineering, physics and optics. He has also served as chairman and member of the organizing committee in international
scientific conferences on electromagnetics and metamaterials. His current research interests span over a broad range of areas, including metamaterials and plasmonics, nanoelectromangetism, nanooptics and nanophotonics, cloaking and transparency, nanocircuits and nanostructures modeling, miniaturized antennas and nanoantennas, and RF antennas and circuits.

Dr. Alu has been the recipient of several international awards and recognitions for his research studies, among which the SUMMA Graduate Fellowship in Advanced Electromagnetics in 2004, three Young Scientist Awards from URSI General Assembly in 2005 and from URSl Commission Bin 2007 and 2004, the Raj Mittra Travel Grant Young Researcher Award in 2003 and several other fellowships, grants and awards for his scientific production. He has also been awarded the second prize at the IEEE AP-S Student Paper Contest in 2003, of which he has been finalist also in 2004 and 2005. He is currently a member of IEEE, OSA and AAAS.