Scientists and curiosity seekers who want to know what a partially or completely cloaked object would look like in real life can now get their wish - virtually.

A team of researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany has created a new visualization tool that can render a room containing such an object, showing the visual effects of such a cloaking mechanism and its imperfections.

These images show a museum nave with a large bump in the reflecting floor covered by an invisibility device known as the carpet cloak. They reveal that even as an invisibility cloak hides the effect of the bump, the cloak itself is apparent due to surface reflections and imperfections. The researchers call this the "ostrich effect" - in reference to the bird's mythic penchant for partial invisibility.

"It's important to visualize how an optical device works," explains Jad C. Halimeh, a Master of Science graduate of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany who wrote and tested the new software as part of his Master's thesis.

The software, which is not yet commercially available, is a visualization tool designed specifically to handle complex media, such as metamaterial optical cloaks. Metamaterials are man-made structured composite materials that exhibit optical properties not found in nature. By tailoring these optical properties, these media can guide light so that cloaking and other optical effects can be achieved.

In 2006, scientists at Duke University demonstrated in the laboratory that an object made of metamaterials can be partially invisible to particular wavelengths of light (not visible light, but rather microwaves).

A few groups, including one at the University of California, Berkeley, have achieved a microscopically-sized carpet cloak. These and other studies have suggested that the Hollywood fantasy of invisibility may one day be reality.

"Refractive index profile and corresponding ray-tracing image of the simplified cloak. (Credit: J.C. Halimeh, T. Ergin, J. Mueller, N. Stenger, and M. Wegener. Photorealistic images of carpet cloaks. Optics Express, 2009; 17 (22): 19328 DOI: 10.1364/OE.17.019328)"

Source: Optical Society of America