Seminars & Colloquia

On the possibility of negative refraction

Prof. William Schaich
Indiana University

Wednesday, November 12, 2003
4:00 pm, Higgins 310
Refreshments precede the talk, Higgins 230, 3:30 pm

There has been a recent flood of papers about the possibility of negative refraction. On the experimental side, it has now become clear that metamaterials can indeed be assembled that exhibit this behavior. On the theoretical side, which will be our focus, one continues to discuss the derivation, interpretation, and appearance of the phenomenon. We will examine what happens when linear combinations of 1,2,3, or many plane waves coming from vacuum encounter the flat interface with a material that has a negative index of refraction. With modest calculations one can follow the evolution in space and time of the reflection/refraction process. This will be illustrated via both still frames and animated movies.