Andre Diatta

Focusing: coming to the point in metamaterials

This paper reviews some properties of lenses in curved and folded optical spaces. The point of the paper is to show some limitations of geometrical optics in the analysis of subwavelength focusing. We first provide a comprehensive derivation for the equation of geodesics in curved optical spaces, which is a tool of choice to design metamaterials in transformation optics. We then analyse the resolution of the image of a line source radiating in the Maxwell fisheye and the Veselago–Pendry slab lens. The former optical medium is deduced from the stereographic projection of a virtual sphere and displays a heterogeneous refractive index n(r) which is proportional to the inverse of 1 + r 2. The latter is described by a homogeneous, but negative, refractive index. It has been suggested that the fisheye makes a perfect lens without negative refraction [Leonhardt, Philbin arxiv:0805.4778v2]. However, we point out that the definition of super-resolution in such a heterogeneous medium should be computed with respect to the wavelength in a homogenised medium, and it is perhaps more adequate to talk about a conjugate image rather than a perfect image (the former does not necessarily contain the evanescent components of the source). We numerically find that both the Maxwell fisheye and a thick silver slab lens lead to a resolution close to λ/3 in transverse magnetic polarisation (electric field pointing orthogonal to the plane). We note a shift of the image plane in the latter lens. We also observe that two sources lead to multiple secondary images in the former lens, as confirmed from light rays travelling along geodesics of the virtual sphere. We further observe resolutions ranging from λ/2 to nearly λ/4 for magnetic dipoles of varying orientations of dipole moments within the fisheye in transverse electric polarisation (magnetic field pointing orthogonal to the plane). Finally, we analyse the Eaton lens for which the source and its image are either located within a unit disc of air, or within a corona 1 < r < 2 with refractive index . In both cases, the image resolution is about λ/2.

Numerical Analysis of Three-dimensional Acoustic Cloaks and Carpets

Abstract We start by a review of the chronology of mathematical results on the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map which paved the way toward the physics of transformational acoustics. We then rederive the expression for the (anisotropic) density and bulk modulus appearing in the pressure wave equation written in the transformed coordinates. A spherical acoustic cloak consisting of an alternation of homogeneous isotropic concentric layers is further proposed based on the effective medium theory. This cloak is characterized by a low reflection and good efficiency over a large bandwidth for both near and far fields, which approximates the ideal cloak with an inhomogeneous and anisotropic distribution of material parameters. The latter suffers from singular material parameters on its inner surface. This singularity depends upon the sharpness of corners, if the cloak has an irregular boundary, e.g. a polyhedron cloak becomes more and more singular when the number of vertices increases if it is star shaped. We thus analyze the acoustic response of a non-singular spherical cloak designed by blowing up a small ball instead of a point, as proposed in [Kohn, Shen, Vogelius, Weinstein, Inverse Problems 24, 015016, 2008]. The multilayered approximation of this cloak requires less extreme densities (especially for the lowest bound). Finally, we investigate another type of non-singular cloaks, known as invisibility carpets [Li and Pendry, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 203901, 2008], which mimic the reflection by a flat ground.

Controlling solid elastic waves with spherical cloaks

We propose a cloak for coupled shear and pressure waves in solids. Its elastic properties are deduced from a geometric transform that retains the form of Navier equations. The spherical shell is made of an anisotropic and heterogeneous medium described by an elasticity tensor ℂ′ (without the minor symmetries), which has 21 non-zero spatially varying coefficients in spherical coordinates. Although some entries of ℂ′, e.g., some with a radial subscript, and the density (a scalar radial function) vanish on the inner boundary of the cloak, this metamaterial exhibits less singularities than its cylindrical counterpart studied in [M. Brun, S. Guenneau, and A. B. Movchan, Appl. Phys. Lett. 94, 061903 (2009).] In the latter work, ℂ′ suffered some infinite entries, unlike in our case. Finite element computations confirm that elastic waves are smoothly bent around a spherical void.

Non-singular cloaks allow mimesis

We design non-singular cloaks enabling objects to scatter waves like objects with smaller size and very different shapes. We consider the Schrodinger equation, which is valid, for example, in the contexts of geometrical and quantum optics. More precisely, we introduce a generalized non-singular transformation for star domains, and numerically demonstrate that an object of nearly any given shape surrounded by a given cloak scatters waves in exactly the same way as a smaller object of another shape. When a source is located inside the cloak, it scatters waves as if it were located some distance away from a small object. Moreover, the invisibility region actually hosts almost trapped eigenstates. Mimetism is numerically shown to break down for the quantified energies associated with confined modes. If we further allow for non-isomorphic transformations, our approach leads to the design of quantum super-scatterers: a small size object surrounded by a quantum cloak described by a negative anisotropic heterogeneous effective mass and a negative spatially varying potential scatters matter waves like a larger nano-object of different shape. Potential applications might be, for instance, in quantum dots probing. The results in this paper, as well as the corresponding derived constitutive tensors, are valid for cloaks with any arbitrary star-shaped boundary cross sections, although for numerical simulations we use examples with piecewise linear or elliptic boundaries.

Revolution analysis of three-dimensional arbitrary cloaks

We extend the design of radially symmetric three-dimensional invisibility cloaks through transformation optics to cloaks with a surface of revolution. We derive the expression of the transformation matrix and show that one of its eigenvalues vanishes on the inner boundary of the cloaks, while the other two remain strictly positive and bounded. The validity of our approach is confirmed by finite edge-elements computations for a non-convex cloak of varying thickness.

Tessellated and stellated invisibility

We derive the expression for the anisotropic heterogeneous matrices of permittivity and permeability associated with two-dimensional polygonal and star shaped cloaks. We numerically show using finite elements that the forward scattering worsens when we increase the number of sides in the latter cloaks, whereas it improves for the former ones. This antagonistic behavior is discussed using a rigorous asymptotic approach. We use a symmetry group theoretical approach to derive the cloaks design.

Control of Rayleigh-like waves in thick plate Willis metamaterials

Recent advances in control of anthropic seismic sources in structured soil led us to explore interactions of elastic waves propagating in plates (with soil parameters) structured with concrete pillars buried in the soil. Pillars are 2 m in diameter, 30 m in depth and the plate is 50 m in thickness. We study the frequency range 5 to 10 Hz, for which Rayleigh wave wavelengths are smaller than the plate thickness. This frequency range is compatible with frequency ranges of particular interest in earthquake engineering. It is demonstrated in this paper that two seismic cloaks’ configurations allow for an unprecedented flow of elastodynamic energy associated with Rayleigh surface waves. The first cloak design is inspired by some approximation of ideal cloaks’ parameters within the framework of thin plate theory. The second, more accomplished but more involved, cloak design is deduced from a geometric transform in the full Navier equations that preserves the symmetry of the elasticity tensor but leads to Willis’ equations, well approximated by a homogenization procedure, as corroborated by numerical simulations. The two cloaks’s designs are strickingly different, and the superior efficiency of the second type of cloak emphasizes the necessity for rigour in transposition of existing cloaks’s designs in thin plates to the geophysics setting. Importantly, we focus our attention on geometric transforms applied to thick plates, which is an intermediate case between thin plates and semi-infinite media, not studied previously. Cloaking efficiency (reduction of the disturbance of the wave wavefront and its amplitude behind an obstacle) and protection (reduction of the wave amplitude within the center of the cloak) are studied for ideal and approximated cloaks’ parameters. These results represent a preliminary step towards designs of seismic cloaks for surface Rayleigh waves propagating in sedimentary soils structured with concrete pillars.

Broadband cloaking and mirages with flying carpets

This paper extends the proposal of Li and Pendry [Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 203901-4 (2008)] to invisibility carpets for infinite conducting planes and cylinders (or rigid planes and cylinders in the context of acoustic waves propagating in a compressible fluid). Carpets under consideration here do not touch the ground: they levitate in mid-air (or float in mid-water), which leads to approximate cloaking for an object hidden underneath, or touch either sides of a square cylinder on, or over, the ground. The tentlike carpets attached to the sides of a square cylinder illustrate how the notion of a carpet on a wall naturally generalizes to sides of other small compact objects. We then extend the concept of flying carpets to circular cylinders and show that one can hide any type of defects under such circular carpets, and yet they still scatter waves just like a smaller cylinder on its own. Interestingly, all these carpets are described by non-singular parameters. To exemplify this important aspect, we propose a multi-layered carpet consisting of isotropic homogeneous dielectrics rings (or fluids with constant bulk modulus and varying density) which works over a finite range of wavelengths.

Riemannian geometry on contact Lie groups

We investigate contact Lie groups having a left invariant Riemannian or pseudo-Riemannian metric with specific properties such as being bi-invariant, flat, negatively curved, Einstein, etc. We classify some of such contact Lie groups and derive some obstruction results to the existence of left invariant contact structures on Lie groups.

Geometry of isophote curves

We consider the intensity surface of a 2D image, we study the evolution of the symmetry sets (and medial axes) of 1-parameter families of iso-intensity curves. This extends the investigation done on 1-parameter families of smooth plane curves (Bruce and Giblin, Giblin and Kimia, etc.) to the general case when the family of curves includes a singular member, as will happen if the curves are obtained by taking plane sections of a smooth surface, at the moment when the plane becomes tangent to the surface.