For the first time ever, a way to make visible light travel in the opposite direction is devised! As normally, light bends when it passes from one material to another like — from air through water or glass.
This phenomenon of negative refraction could be used in constructing optical microscopes, capable of imaging things as small as molecules. It can also help create cloaking devices that can render objects invisible.
With its help a new nanofabricated photonic material is been created by California Institute of Technology applied physics researchers Henri Lezec, Jennifer Dionne, and Professor Harry Atwater. This new material can create a negative refractive index in the blue-green region of the visible spectrum.
If new optical materials could be made at the nanoscale level in a certain way, why won’t it be possible to make the light bend at the same angle, but in the opposite direction? Physicists have thought this and taken up the challenge to make this new material.
The researchers will be reporting their success of this construction in the March 22 online publication of Science Express.
