Experimental investigation of omnidirectional multiphysics bilayer invisibility cloak with anisotropic geometry

Thermal-electric bilayer invisibility cloak can prevent the heat flux and electric current from touching the object without distorting the external temperature and electric potential fields simultaneously.In this paper,we design an omnidirectional thermal-electric invisibility cloak with anisotropic geometry.Based on the theory of neutral inclusion,the anisotropic effective thermal and electric conductivities of confocal elliptical bilayer core-shell structure are derived,thus obtaining the anisotropic matrix material to eliminate the external disturbances omnidirectionally.The inner shell of the cloak is selected as an insulating material to shield the heat flux and electric current.Then,the omnidirectional thermal-electric cloaking effect is verified numerically and experimentally based on the theoretical anisotropic matrix and manufactured composite structure,respectively.Furthermore,we achieve the thermal-electric cloaking effect under a specific direction of heat flux and electric current using the isotropic natural materials to broaden the selection range of materials.The method proposed to eliminate anisotropy and achieve the omnidirectional effect could also be expanded to other different physical fields for the metadevices with different functions.

Simultaneously realizing thermal andelectromagnetic cloaking by multi-physicalnull medium

Simultaneously manipulating multiple physical fields plays an important role in the increasingly complex integrated systems,aerospace equipment,biochemical productions,etc.For on-chip systems with high integration level,the precise and efficient control of the propagation of electromagnetic waves and heat fluxes simultaneously is particularly important.In this study,we propose a graphical designing method(i.e.,thermal-electromagnetic surface transformation)based on thermal-electromagnetic null medium to simultaneously control the propagation of electromagnetic waves and thermal fields according to the pre-designed paths.A thermal-electromagnetic cloak,which can create a cloaking effect on both electromagnetic waves and thermal fields simultaneously,is designed by thermal-electromagnetic surface transformation and verified by both numerical simulations and experimental measurements.The thermal-electromagnetic surface transformation proposed in this study provides a new methodology for simultaneous controlling on electromagnetic and temperature fields,and may have significant applications in improving thermal-electromagnetic compatibility problem,protecting of thermal-electromagnetic sensitive components,and improving efficiency of energy usage for complex onchip systems.

搜索引擎Cloaking技术研究

Cloaking指的是显示给Google和其他搜索引擎的页面与显示给普通浏览者的页面不同的技术。这种技术的目的通常是想操纵搜索引擎的排名结果,当普通浏览者在搜索引擎结果中查找资料的时候就会受到误导。本文介绍了Cloaking的定义和出现原因,并对Cloaking技术进行了分析和评价。

Role of on-board discharge in shock wave drag reduction and plasma cloaking

In the present paper, a physical model is proposed for reducing the problem of the drag reduction of an attached bow shock around the nose of a high-speed vehicle with on-board discharge, to the problem of a balance between the magnetic pressure and gas pressure of plane shock of a partially ionized gas consisting of the environmental gas around the nose of the vehicle and the on-board discharge-produced plasma. The relation between the shock strength and the discharge-induced magnetic pressure is studied by means of a set of one-fluid, hydromagnetic equations reformed for the present purpose, where the discharge-induced magnetic field consists of the electron current （produced by the discharge）-induced magnetic field and the partially ionized gas flow-induced one. A formula for the relation between the above parameters is derived. It shows that the discharge-induced magnetic pressure can minimize the shock strength, successfully explaining the two recent experimental observations on attached bow shock mitigation and elimination in a supersonic flow during on-board discharge [Phys. Plasmas 9 （2002） 721 and Phys. Plasmas 7 （2000） 1345]. In addition, the formula implies that the shock elimination leaves room for a layer of higher-density plasma rampart moving around the nose of the vehicle, being favourable to the plasma radar cloaking of the vehicle. The reason for it is expounded.

Design method for an acoustic cloak in flows by topology optimization

In this paper,a design method for an acoustic cloak in the presence of background mean flows is proposed by using topology optimization,which enables the associated fabrication of the cloaking design.The density-based topology optimization method is used to allocate the designated materials,thus providing the structure of the cloak.The optimization problem is efficiently solved with the gradient-based globally convergent method of moving asymptotes,which utilizes the derivative information from the finite element simulation studies of the linearized acoustic potential equation.This paper introduces the whole design method first then numerically demonstrates the corresponding performance,which shall constitute the main contribution of the present work.

The simplified material parameter equation for elliptical cylinder cloaks

We simplify the material parameter equation for elliptical cylinder cloaks under transverse-electric and transverse- magnetic models, respectively, and confirm these simplified equations by numerical simulations. As a result, the number of the component parameters is reduced from three to two, which simplifies the design of meta-materials and thus opens up the possibility of achieving elliptical cylinder cloaks in an easy way.

The design of metamaterial cloaks embedded in anisotropic medium

By using coordinate transformation method, this paper obtains an useful equation of designing meta-material cloaks embedded in anisotropic medium. This equation is the generalization of what was introduced early by Pendry et al （2006 Science 312 1780） and can be more widely used. As an example of its applications, this paper deduces the material parameter equation for cylinder cloaks embedded in anisotropic medium, and then offers the numerical simulation. The results show that such a cylinder cloak has perfect cloaking performance and therefore verifies the method proposed in this paper.

Material parameter equation for rotating elliptical spherical cloaks

By using the coordinate transformation method, we have deduced the material parameter equation for rotating elliptical spherical cloaks and carried out simulation as well. The results indicate that the rotating elliptical spherical cloaking shell, which is made of meta-materials whose permittivity and permeability are governed by the equation deduced in this paper, can achieve perfect invisibility by excluding electromagnetic fields from the internal region without disturbing any external field.

Tunable Electromagnetic Cloaking by External Field

Electromagnetic cloaking based on the scattering cancellation method have been reviewed. The possibility of designing the tunable electromagnetic cloaking is analytically suggested with a single cloak composed of homogeneous materials,including semiconductor,superconductor,ferrite and ferroelectrics by using Mie scattering theory. The simulated results demonstrate that the cloaks with these homogeneous materials can drastically reduce the total scattering cross sections of the cloaked system by using the finite element method. These cloaking frequencies can be controlled by external field through tuning the permittivity or permeability of these materials by the applied field,such as temperature,magnetic field and electric field. These may provide some potential ways to design tunable cloaking with considerable flexibility.

Design of infrared camouflage cloak for underground silos

The temperature difference between the exposed surface of an underground silo and the surrounding soil surface is significant,which means a silo can be easily found by infrared detection.We designed an infrared camouflage cloak consisting of an imitative layer and an insulation layer for the silos.The imitative layer is used to imitate the thermal response of the soil to the surrounding environment.The insulation layer is used to weaken the impact of the internal temperature field of the silo on the lower boundary of the imitative layer.A silo model including surrounding soil and a soil model without silo were established,and the influences of the material and thickness of each layer on the infrared camouflage effect were analyzed.The results show that when using a silicone rubber containing alumina powder with a volume fraction of 3.18% as the imitative material,its thermal inertia is in consistent with that of the soil.Meanwhile,it was found that the thickness of the imitative layer doesn't need to be greater than its thermal penetration depth to achieve the infrared camouflage,and the absence of the insulation layer will cause hot spots on the silo surface in winter to weaken the camouflage effect.The optimized thicknesses of the imitative layer and the insulation layer are 22 cm and 4 cm re spectively.The simulations indicate that with the application of the cloak,the maximum value of the absolute values of the temperature differences between the average temperatures of the silo surface and the surrounding soil surface temperatures drops from 1,59℃ to 0.31℃ in summer and from 1.92℃ to 0.21℃ in winter.This designed cloak can achieve an all-weather and full-time passive infrared camouflage.

Acoustic elliptical cylindrical cloaks

By making a comparison between the acoustic equations and the 2-dimensional （2D） Maxwell equations, we obtain the material parameter equations （MPE） for acoustic elliptical cylindrical cloaks. Both the theoretical results and the numerical results indicate that an elliptical cylindrical cloak can realize perfect acoustic invisibility when the spatial distributions of mass density and bulk modulus are exactly configured according to the proposed equations. The present work is the meaningful exploration of designing acoustic cloaks that are neither sphere nor circular cylinder in shape, and opens up possibilities for making complex and multiplex acoustic cloaks with simple models such as spheres, circular or elliptic cylinders.

Cloaking an object in a half space without reflection

A novel cloaking scheme to hide an object in a half space from electromagnetic （EM） detection without reflection is firstly presented. The proposed cloaking scheme contains a couple of matching strips, which consist of an isotropic material layer and an anisotropic UPML layer, located right under the bottom surface of a semi-cylindrical cloaking shell. Simple expressions for the material parameters of the cloaking scheme are derived. Numerical simulations are also performed, and a good cloaking effect is achieved. The cloaking scheme is effective to hide the local object with strong scattering characters placed on mobile carders, such as the radar antenna system on an aircraft.

Nonsingularity in two-dimensional cylindrical invisible cloaks

The method of designing electromagnetic invisible cloaks is usually based on the form-invariance of Maxwell＇s equations in coordinate transformation. The exterior boundary of a cylindrical invisible cloak is unchanged and the interior boundary is extended from that of a point to that of a cylindrical region in coordination transformation. This transformation process makes perfect cloaks, but it causes singularity in the constitutive material parameters of cloaks. This singularity makes the cloaks impossible to realize in practice. In order to remove this singularity, this paper sets a small cylindrical region replacing a point in the space transformation. The cylindrical region is so small that it does not affect the invisibility effects, but it can remove the singularity for material parameters. Full wave simulations based on the finite element method were used to verify the designed cloaks.

Acoustic carpet invisibility cloak with two open windows using multilayered homogeneous isotropic material

We present a method for designing an open acoustic cloak that can conceal a perturbation on Hat ground aria simultaneously meet the requirement of communication and matter interchange between the inside and the outside of the cloak. This cloak can be constructed with a multilayered structure and each layer is an isotropic and homogeneous medium. The design scheme consists of two steps： firstly, we apply a conformal coordinate transformation to obtain a quasi-perfect cloak with heterogeneous isotropic material; then, according to the profile of the material distribution, we degenerate this cloak into a multilayered-homogeneous isotropic cloak, which has two open windows with negligible disturbance on its invisibility performance. This may greatly facilitate the fabrication and enhance the applicability of such a carpet-type cloak.

Time gap for temporal cloak based on spectral hole burning in atomic medium

We demonstrate the possibility of creating a time gap in the slow light based on spectral hole burning in a fourlevel Doppler broadened sodium atomic system. A time gap is also observed between the slow and the fast light in the hole burning region and near the burnt hole region, respectively. A cloaking time gap is attained in microseconds and no distortion is observed in the transmitted pulse. The width of the time gap is observed to vary with the inverse Doppler effect in this system. Our results may provide a way to create multiple time gaps for a temporal cloak.

Achieving acoustic cloak by using compressible background flow

We propose a scheme of acoustic spherical cloaking by means of background irrotational flow in compressible fluid.The background flow forms a virtual curved spacetime and directs the sound waves to bypass the cloaked objects. To satisfy the laws of real fluid, we show that spatially distributed mass source and momentum source are necessary to supply. The propagation of sound waves in this system is studied via both geometric acoustics approximation and full wave approach.The analytic solution of sound fields is obtained for plane wave incidence. The results reveal the effect of phase retardation（or lead） in comparison with the ordinary transformation-acoustic cloak. In addition, the ability of cloaking is also evaluated for unideal background flows by analyzing the scattering cross section.

Multi-window invisible cloaks

This paper reports that a general method of designing invisible cloaks is using variant constitutive material parameters to realize the space transformation. A hollow region can be hidden after this transformation. It was recently shown （Ma H, Qu S B, Xu Z and Wang J F 2009 Appl. Phys. Lett. 94 103501） that when the original point moves to the boundary of a cloak, the cloak can be designed to be open. Based on this theory, we propose multi-window invisible cloaks which can conceal a group of objects. Full wave simulations for invisible cloaks with regular and irregular shapes verified this method.

In-band metamaterial cloak based on the interplay of absorption and transmission

A microwave metamaterial shelter with an electromagnetic narrow window over a broad absorption spectrum is experimentally demonstrated by resorting to conventional impedance-matching theory and metamaterial resonance.This device consists of a broad absorber and an embedded electric resonator,and has the ability of permitting one to"see"surroundings but not to be readily sensed by outside detectors.The origin is verified to be a dipole oscillation excited in absorbing region which can induce selective re-emission of the captured energy towards the enclosed space.The performance of"observing without being perceived"is numerically presented.

Experimental demonstration of an invisible cloak with irregular shape by using tensor transmission line metamaterials

We present the design and the experimental demonstration of an invisible cloak with irregular shape by using tensor transmission line（TL） metamaterials. The fabricated cloak consists of tensor TL unit cells exhibiting anisotropic effective material parameters, while the background medium consists of isotropic TL unit cells. The simulated and the measured field patterns around the cloak show a fairly good agreement, both demonstrate that the fabricated cloak can shield the cloaked interior area from electromagnetic fields without perturbing the external fields. The scattering of the cloaked perfect electric conductor（PEC） is minimized. Furthermore, the nonresonant property of the TL structure results in a relatively broad bandwidth of the realized cloak, which is clearly observed in our experiment.

Design of two-dimensional elliptically cylindrical invisible cloaks with multiple regions

Two-dimensional （2D） elliptically cylindrical invisible cloaks with multiple regions are designed based on the trans-formation optics and the complementary media theory. Multiple invisible cloak regions can be obtained by properly using the compressed or folded transformation in each space layer. The constitutive parameter tensor expressions for each re- gion have been obtained. The results of full wave simulations by using finite element software confirm the validity of the constitutive parameter tensor expressions. In addition, the parameters are relatively easier to realize.