COLLOQUIUM: Geometry, light and a wee bit of magic
2009
Thursday 17 December 2009
from 15:15
to 16:15 at
Oskar Klein Auditorium
Speaker :
Ulf Leonhardt (University of St Andrews, UK)
Abstract :
Many mass-produced everyday products of modern technology would appear
to be completely magical to our ancestors: mobile phones, television,
computers, electric light, cars, etc. Some devices that are still
perceived as magical or mysterious are about to appear in the laboratory
and are not so mysterious after all.
For example, the first prototype of
an electromagnetic cloaking device has been recently made at Duke
university.
This device makes an object invisible to microwave radiation
of a single frequency and polarization.
At Harvard University, first
vital steps towards levitating objects on the forces of the quantum
vacuum have been made.
At St Andrews, we observed first indications of
artificial black holes in the laboratory, using extremely short light
pulses in photonic-crystal fibres.
Invisibility devices, quantum forces
and optical black holes have two things in common: they represent
applications of Einstein's general relativity in Maxwell's
electromagnetism and their practical demonstrations are made possible by
modern metamaterials.
I will try to elucidate the scientific principles
acing behind the scenes of such "pure and applied magic".
Slides