February 9, 2015

New Design Tool for Metamaterials




(Feb.9 ’15) Metamaterials – artificial nanostructures engineered with electromagnetic properties not found in nature – offer tantalizing future prospects such as high resolution optical microscopes and superfast optical computers. To realize the vast potential of metamaterials, however, scientists will need to hone their understanding of the fundamental physics behind them. This will require accurately predicting nonlinear optical properties – meaning that interaction with light changes a material’s properties, for example, light emerges from the material with a different frequency than when it entered. Help has arrived.