History of metamaterials
The history of metamaterials begins with artificial dielectrics in microwave engineering as it developed just after World War II.
This has led to photonic crystals, and at the beginning of the new millennium, the proof of principle for functioning metamaterials with a negative index of refraction in the microwave- (at 10.5 Gigahertz) and optical [4][5] range.
In addition, he is credited with coining the term "left handed material" for the present day metamaterial because of the anti-parallel behavior of the wave vector and other electromagnetic fields.
[16] In the 19th century Maxwell's equations united all previous observations, experiments, and established propositions pertaining to electricity and magnetism into a consistent theory, which is also fundamental to optics.
[17] Maxwell's work demonstrated that electricity, magnetism and even light are all manifestations of the same phenomenon, namely the electromagnetic field.
[18] Likewise, the concept of using certain constructed materials as a method for manipulating electromagnetic waves dates back to the 19th century.
[24][25] Karl F. Lindman, from 1914 and into the 1920s, studied artificial chiral media formed by a collection of randomly oriented small spirals.
[26] Much of the historic research related to metamaterials is weighted from the view of antenna beam shaping within microwave engineering just after World War II.
Furthermore, metamaterials appear to be historically linked to the body of research pertaining to artificial dielectrics throughout the late 1940s, the 1950s and the 1960s.
The most common use for artificial dielectrics throughout prior decades has been in the microwave regime for antenna beam shaping.
There is also an extensive reference list that is focused on the properties of artificial dielectrics in the 1991 book, Field Theory of Guided Waves by Robert E.
[2] "Magnetic particles made of capacitively loaded loops were also suggested by Sergei Schelkunoff in 1952 (who was a senior colleague of Winston Kock at Bell Labs at the time).
In addition, he conducted analytical studies regarding the response of customized metallic particles to a quasistatic electromagnetic radiation.
[29][30][32][33] He employed particles, which would be of varying geometric shape; spheres, discs, ellipsoids and prolate or oblate spheroids, and would be either isolated or set in a repeating pattern as part of an array configuration.
The optical properties of the medium depended solely on the particles’ geometrical shape and spacing, rather than on their own intrinsic behavior.
[34] Kock, however, did not investigate the simultaneous occurrence of negative values of ε and μ, which has become one of the first achievements defining modern metamaterials.
This was because research in artificial materials was oriented toward other goals, such as creating plasma media at RF or microwave frequencies related to the overarching needs of NASA and the space program at that time.
Turner advanced microwave beam shaping systems with a lens that has three perfect focal points; two symmetrically located off-axis and one on-axis.
[38] In 1987 Eli Yablonovitch proposed controlling spontaneous emissions and constructing physical zones in periodic dielectrics that forbid certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation.
[40] Pendry discovered that the radiation absorption property did not come from the molecular or chemical structure of the material, i.e. the carbon per se.
He envisioned and hypothesized miniature loops of copper wire set in a fiberglass substrate could mimic the action of electrons but on a larger scale.
The switch, in turn, would allow Pendry to determine or alter the magnetic properties of the material simply by choice.
The concentrated effort was led by the US government for researching interactions between the ionosphere and the re-entry of NASA space vehicles.
Hence, in electromagnetic domain, a negative value for permittivity and permeability occurring simultaneously was a requirement to produce the first metamaterials.
In essence these negative index metamaterials were noted for having the ability to reverse many of the physical properties that govern the behavior of ordinary optical materials.
Thus, testing the "new" metamaterial began for the effects described by Victor Veselago 30 years earlier, but only at first in the microwave frequency domain.
Pendry's paper described a theoretical novel lens that could capture images below the diffraction limit by employing the negative refractive index behavior.
[46] Ulf Leonhardt was born in East Germany, and presently occupies the theoretical physics chair at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and is considered one the leaders in the science of creating an invisibility cloak.
However, according to the PRL assessment, one of the anonymous reviewers noted that (he or she ) had been to two meetings in the previous months with John Pendry's group, who were also working on a cloaking device.
[dubious – discuss] Later in 2006, Science (the journal) reversed its decision and contacted Leonhardt to publish his paper because it had just received a theoretical study from Pendry's team entitled "Controlling Electromagnetic Fields".
