How the Beam inside the Hyperbolic Metamaterial Changes Its Direction (VIDEO)
Caption
Hyperbolic metamaterials are artificially made structures that can be formed by depositing alternating thin layers of a conductor such as silver or graphene onto a substrate. One of their special abilities is supporting the propagation of a very narrow light beam. This narrow beam can then be used to "fingerprint" and obtain spatial and material information about nanometer-scale objects -- allowing identification without complete images. Researchers report their work in APL Photonics.
This animation shows how the beam inside the hyperbolic metamaterial changes its direction when the wavelength of the light is swept from 800 nanometers to 1,600 nanometers.
Credit
Zhengyu Huang
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