Playing with Light to Create a Perfect Cat's Eye

In spite of the latest research and breakthrough discoveries in that which involves light, it is still poorly understood and its potential is only surface-scratched. A better comprehension of the behavior and properties of light could lead to developing ways to manipulate it and further enhance its scientific usage. For instance, invisibility would no longer seem to be such a difficult thing to achieve. A pair of physicists have taken on this challenge of overcoming the comprehensiveness restrictions of optical singularities, which could provide a perfect cat's eye for technologies used for manufacturing, for example.

 

A new study, published in a "Cloaking and Transformation Optics" focus issue of the "New Journal of Physics," entitled "The Transmutation of Singularities in Optical Instruments" and written by Thomas Tyc from the Masaryk University, together with Ulf Leonhardt from the University of St. Andrews and the Singapore National University, indicates that it is theoretically possible to reflect light coming from all directions.

 

Cat's eyes, as well as materials that glow in the dark, reflect incoming light, thus alerting drivers of the presence of a person, hole or anything else signaled, but they are not responsive to all light coming from any angle. The influence of certain materials on light is measured by the refractive index, which has a value of 1 for light speed and about 1.5 for the light that meets a glass of water. The forces that cause materials to push the refractive index values towards zero or towards infinite are called optical singularities, and were believed to be impossible to produce.

 

But Tyc and Leonhardt managed to create materials that at least simulate the singularities, leading to usable optical illusions, such as developing a perfect cat's eye that reflects the light coming from any angle. "Our method works for optical singularities which are the curse of physics, often seeming intractable, but we have found a way of transmuting optical singularities with just harmless crystal defects as a side-effect," they explain, as Eurekalert reports.