physics4me

The design may lead to shields that protect pacemaker wearers during MRI scans

Researchers have designed a “cloak” that is invisible to magnetic fields both coming in and coming out.

The idea of blocking magnetic fields has been proposed before, but the new design, in the New Journal of Physics, could even hide magnetic materials.

It could thus find application in security or medical contexts, such as those surrounding MRI scans.

The approach uses superconductor layers and the “metamaterials” familiar from recent invisibility cloak research.

Metamaterials are artificially designed materials designed to guide electromagnetic waves – like light or magnetic fields – in a way that natural materials do not.

Much research in recent years has attempted to put metamaterials to work in Harry Potter-style invisibility cloaks that guide light waves around a cloak’s wearer – although experiments have only demonstrated such effects on tiny items, or for a limited range of colours.

But because light and magnetism are two facets of the same physical force, many of the same principles apply for demonstrating a magnetic cloak, as the report’s lead author Alvaro Sanchez explained….. Read the rest of this entry »