Inexpensive Harry Potter-Inspired Cloaking Device Developed At University Of Rochester

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Researchers from the University of Rochester in New York have developed an inexpensive new way to create a Harry Potter-esque invisibility cloak using ordinary lenses to obscure objects from sight at a variety of angles.
According to Carrie Putnam of Reuters, the device known as the Rochester Cloak is not actually a cloak at all, but a device that resembles the equipment typically used by an eye doctor. When an item is placed behind its layered lenses, the object appears to be “cloaked” or hidden from view, while everything surrounding it appears undisturbed.
This is not the first attempt to build a so-called invisibility cloak inspired by the one featured in JK Rowling’s novels []. In fact, Rex Santus of Mashable said that “efforts toward a real-life invisibility cloak have popped up more than a few times over the last several years.”
[ Watch the Video: How Does Cloaking Work In The Real World? ]
However, Santus added, “none have quite moved beyond the muggle world, but scientists seem keen on bringing a true disappearing cloak to reality.” Furthermore, while it might have drawn inspiration from Harry Potter, he said that the Rochester Cloak “wouldn’t exactly be useful in aiding Harry and friends’ exploits at Hogwarts.”
What these invisibility cloaks can do is bend light around an object in order to essentially hide it from view, and according to Rochester physics professor John Howell and graduate student Joseph Choi, their take on it is less complicated and less expensive than previous versions. Furthermore, they claim that it is the first device of its kind capable of hiding objects in three dimensions, regardless of what angle they are being viewed at.
“A lot of people have worked on a lot of different aspects of optical cloaking for years,” Howell told Putnam on Friday. In a statement, he explained that while there had been “many high tech approaches to cloaking,” the basic concept behind them involved making it so that light appears to “pass around something as if it isn’t there” – a process which typically requires the use of “high-tech or exotic materials.”
Howell and Choi’s Rochester Cloak, however, required the use of slightly more than $1,000 worth of materials, and the developers believe that it can be done even less expensively. Cheap does not mean ineffective, however, as Putman said that in their tests, the researchers successfully cloaked a hand, a face and a ruler.
The researchers, who have submitted a paper detailing their findings to the journal Optics Express, said that their device can be scaled up to the size of the lenses, which makes it possible to cloak fairly large objects. In addition, the device is broadband, which means that it works for the entire visible spectrum of light, instead of just for select frequencies.
[ Watch the Video: The Rochester Cloak ]
However, while they tout their work as an improvement over previous cloaking devices, they admit that it is not perfect. Choi said that it “bends light and sends it through the center of the device, so the on-axis region cannot be blocked or cloaked.” What that means is that the cloaked region is doughnut-shaped. Furthermore, he and Howell said that the cloak has edge effects, but those effects can be reduced if the lenses used in the device are large enough.
Howell, who said that he first became interested in experimenting with cloaking devices while helping his children with a holiday project, said that there are numerous potential applications for their device. For example, it could allow a surgeon to “look through his hands to what he is actually operating on,” he said, while the principles could be applied to a vehicle to allow drivers to see through blind spots.