Recently there has been quite a flurry of activity
concerning the use of so-called metamaterials for
various optical and electromagnetic applications. One
particular application has been ”cloaking”: to create a
space that itself, together with any object occupying
part of this space, is completely ”invisible” to
electromagnetic (boundary) observations. One prominent
approach to ”cloaking” is based on metamaterials
obtained by clever use of ”push-forward” mapping
techniques. As it happens, the same mapping
techniques proposed by engineers and physicists to
generate such metamaterials had previously been studied
by mathematicians working on a geometric version of the
Impedance Tomography Problem.
The idea behind this workshop is to bring together
selected (electrical) engineers, applied physicists and
mathematicians, whose work have already had, or could
very possibly in the future have implications as far as
metamaterials and cloaking are concerned. Among
electrical engineers and applied physicists this would
of course involve people who have actual experience with
the ”manufacturing” of such electromagnetic
metamaterials. From the mathematical side it would
naturally involve people whose past work have had
significant impact on electromagnetic imaging problems –
and the associated reconstruction limitations. Very
interesting (and still largely open) areas of research
involve:
(1) cloaking ”at all frequencies”, and furthermore not
just for
time-harmonic Maxwell,
(2) the construction of efficient approximate cloakings,
and
(3) a deeper understanding of the efficient
”manufacture” of such cloakings. Even though the above
discussion
centers on cloaking and metamaterials obtained by
mapping techniques, it would be quite natural to include
other closely related subjects.
Two subjects that are on our “supplementary” list are
(1) materials with negative index of refraction, and
their use in cloakings, and
(2) metamaterials designed to create other optical- or
electromagnetic ”illusions”. The workshop will provide a
forum to exchange and stimulate new ideas from different
disciplines, and to formulate new challenging problems
whose solution will have impact on applications.
A limited amount of funding for participants at all levels is available,
especially for researchers in the early stages of their career who want to
attend the full program.
Center for Scientific Computation And Mathematical Modeling (CSCAMM)
Computer Science Instructional Center (Building #406)
University of Maryland, College Park
College Park, MD 20742-3289
