Grant for research into invisibility cloaking

Invisibility cloaks could be a part of our future thanks to new research.

Dr Robert Thompson from Otago University has been granted $345,000 from the Marsden fund to research transformation optics and the science of cloaking.

He says it could be a few years until we can cloak invisible light but the theory that could enable us to do this will grow as a result of this research.

"I don't know how soon we'll have invisibility on the scale of say Harry Potter or Star Trek where you can hide large objects from visible light."

But Dr Thompson says this grant gives him a great opportunity to further explore mathematical equations which can manipulate light.

He says the basic theory for cloaking is already established but he'll use the grant money to develop the mathematical tools to do this more accurately.

"You take this idea and you say well here is what i want the light to do, I want it to follow this particular path and then you have to work backwards using the mathematics to find out what kind of device you would need to build in order to make that happen."

Dr Thompson hopes the research findings will provide engineers with a more complete set of transformation optics tools that will help design other complex metamaterial-based devices.

22 different projects were selected across a diverse range of topics and granted part of the $15 million funding.

Photo: Stock xchnge