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Does anybody know how people come up with the metamaterial designs? Do they just try lots of aesthetically pleasing symmetries out until they find one that work
by tlarkworthy 13y ago
Does anybody know how people come up with the metamaterial designs? Do they just try lots of aesthetically pleasing symmetries out until they find one that works?
Or do they have some forward model to predict the outcome before they build it, but given the often inexplicable results that doesn't seem possible.
Where do the ideas come from?
- triplepoint217 13y agoYes, we do have some pretty good theories for designing metamaterials. From what I can remember (and quickly look up on the net), one of the leading theories is called transformation optics, and finding a coordinate transform to a coordinate system where the path you want light to take is a straight line. You can work out what your metamaterial has to look like from that coordinate transform. I probably have some of the details of the technique wrong, I am trying to remember a talk from a year ago. If you want more detail, look at John Pendry's papers (he is probably the leading theorist in metamaterials). http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/j.pendry http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/j.pendry
- tlarkworthy 13y agooh hot. Thanks a lot. Sounds like another win for eigenvectors :p