Paraxial ray optics cloaking

TL;DR

This paper presents an experimental demonstration of a three-dimensional, broadband, transmitting optical cloak using simple ray optics principles, overcoming previous material and scalability limitations in visible light cloaking.

Contribution

It introduces a paraxial ray optics formalism for perfect cloaking and demonstrates a practical, scalable, and broadband 3D optical cloak using off-the-shelf components.

Findings

Successful experimental demonstration of 3D optical cloaking

The cloak operates broadband and scales to large objects

Uses no new materials, only standard optics

Abstract

Despite much interest and progress in optical spatial cloaking, a three-dimensional (3D), transmitting, continuously multidirectional cloak in the visible regime has not yet been demonstrated. Here we experimentally demonstrate such a cloak using ray optics, albeit with some edge effects. Our device requires no new materials, uses isotropic off-the-shelf optics, scales easily to cloak arbitrarily large objects, and is as broadband as the choice of optical material, all of which have been challenges for current cloaking schemes. In addition, we provide a concise formalism that quantifies and produces perfect optical cloaks in the small-angle (`paraxial') limit.