Electromagnetic cloaking with metamaterials

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Electromagnetic cloaking has aroused increasing interest in the scientific

community, especially amongst researchers who are developing so-called
metamaterials - artificial composites having exotic electromagnetic
properties. In this paper we review the basic principles of metamaterials,
especially those for cloaking applications, and describe the recent
developments in the field of electromagnetic cloaking. Attention is given also
to the recently proposed cloaking technique which is based on networks of
transmission lines.

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The idea of a device which makes objects invisible to the eye has a
very long history, starting from folklore of many nationalities: we all
have heard about various “invisibility hats” or “invisibility cloaks”,
such as the cloak of Harry Potter, a character in J. K. Rowling's
novels, but can such a device be practically realized, at least in
some limited frequency range? Can a finite-size physical body be
made invisible for electromagnetic radiation? Scientists have been
thinking about these questions for a long time. Dollin published a
paper in 1961, where he described an inhomogeneous and
anisotropic magneto-dielectric structure, such that a plane wave
falling from infinity on this body “passes through it without
distortions1”. Apparently independent from that early work, similar
structures were more recently described in a series of papers by
Leonhardt, Pendry, Greenleaf, et al.2, 3, 4, 5. As another example,
Kerker published a paper entitled “Invisible bodies” in 1975 6, and
that was a precursor of another recent series of publications by Alù
and Engheta on invisible structures based on cancellation of
scattering7, 8, 9.

Here we will review cloaking techniques based on scattering

cancellation, on coordinate transformations, and on the use of
artificial materials realized as dense meshes of transmission lines 10.
There are some other techniques, like the use of artificial
electromagnetic surfaces, which allow to hide objects of certain
special shapes for a single direction of illumination11 or the use of
plasmonic resonant structures12, which unfortunately can be only
briefly touched in this paper.

At the very core of cloaking techniques is the use of materials with

very specific and often quite exotic properties. Because nature does
not provide us with ready-to-use materials with the necessary
properties, the only possibility is to realize them as artificial
materials (metamaterials).

Metamaterials

The European Virtual Institute for Artificial Electromagnetic Materials and

Metamaterials13 defines the metamaterial as “an arrangement of artificial
structural elements, designed to achieve advantageous and unusual
electromagnetic properties”. If certain electromagnetic properties of a
material (usually measured in terms of its permittivity ɛ and permeability μ)
are needed for an application in a certain range of the wavelengths of
electromagnetic radiation, this material should appear homogeneous at the
scale of this wavelength. This means that the size of its molecules as well as
the distance between molecules should be much smaller than the
wavelength. If the application is, for instance, in the microwave frequency
range, where the wavelength is of the order of centimeters, the size of a
single “molecule” can be of the order of millimeters, and it can be
engineered and manufactured from ordinary materials consisting of usual,
negligibly small at this wavelength scale, molecules. This is one of the origins
of the term “metamaterial”: it is an artificial material with unusual properties
made of usual materials with usual properties14, 15. Of course, if the desired
application is at very high frequencies, such as in the visible range, the size
of these artificial molecules should be of the order of tens of nanometers or
even smaller, which makes the actual realization a serious technological
challenge.
The effective properties of metamaterials are defined by the (ordinary)
materials from which the metamaterial inclusions are made, by their shape,
mutual orientation and concentration of inclusions, and so on. This means
that there are very many degrees of freedom in the design of the desired
electromagnetic response, allowing for realization of artificial media with
quite exotic and extreme properties16, such as required for realization of
cloaking devices. Although the metamaterial research activities started only
quite recently, the results have been already covered in a number of
monographs17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27.

What is cloaking and invisibility

What is an electromagnetic cloak? This is a device which makes an object

“invisible” for electromagnetic radiation in a certain frequency range. Of
course, the most exciting applications can be envisaged for cloaks working in
the visible part of the spectrum. An object is invisible if it does not reflect
waves back to the source and in addition, it does not scatter waves in other
directions, and, furthermore, it does not create any shadow (the last means
that there is no scattering in the forward direction). From these conditions it
follows that the object should not absorb any power. Put in other words, the
object should not disturb the fields existing outside the object.

In terms of the theory of scattering of electromagnetic waves (including

light), to “cloak” an object means to reduce its total scattering cross section
(SCS), ideally to zero, since the total scattering cross section is defined as
the ratio of the total scattered power to the incident power density. Cloaking
should not be confused with the stealth technology. Stealth technologies
minimize only the power reflected back to the probing radar (the
backscattering cross section or “radar cross section”). This can be done
either by covering an object with an absorbing layer or by shaping the object
so that the field scattered towards the illumination direction is minimized.
Obviously, even an ideal stealth aircraft is visible if observed from the side or
from the back. It can be shown that absorbing coverings and object shaping
cannot reduce the total scattering cross section by more than 50% 28.

The concept of invisibility has been closely related to cloaking in recent

literature, the difference is that invisibility means the reduction of the total
scattering cross section of a specific object. This can be achieved for
example by cancelling radiation from the induced dipole moments of the
scatterer by introducing another object, in which dipole moments of the
opposite direction are induced7. Thus, the combination of these objects
scatters very little, whereas both objects independently scatter strongly.
Some invisible structures can also be used as cloaks, if the object to be made
invisible consists of, e.g., a perfectly conducting hollow enclosure, since
inside this enclosure there are no fields9.

Scattering cancellation technique

It has been known for a long time that scattering from an object can be
mitigated by adding to the system another object, the scattering of which is
complementary with respect to the principal scatterer6, 29, 30. This type of
scattering minimization can be achieved for example with covering the main
scattering object by single or multiple layers of dielectric materials6, 30, 31.
The recent interest towards this technique has been aroused after the
proposal of using plasmonic materials for transparency 7 and this technique
has been developed further8, 9, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38.

Fig. 1 shows an illustration of the principle of scattering cancellation. Here a

spherical dielectric object with permittivity larger than in the surrounding
medium, is covered with a dielectric shell having the permittivity smaller
than in the surrounding medium. The shell diameter can be chosen so that
the scattering from the core and the shell cancel each other, since dipole
moments of the opposite sign are induced in them. Of course, there may also
exist higher modes in addition to the dipolar modes, but it has been shown
that efficient invisibility can be achieved even with suppressing just the
dipolar scattering9. It is possible to suppress also higher modes, but this
obviously makes the design more complicated 9. Cloaking of collections of
particles and the extension of the scattering cancellation approach to
infrared and optical frequencies have also been recently
discussed33, 34, 35, 36, as well as the effects of material dispersion 37.

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Fig. 1. Illustration of the scattering cancellation technique 7: the dipole

moments induced in the object to be made invisible and in the shell covering
this object cancel each other. Reproduced with permission from the American
Physical Society.

The problems of utilizing cloaks based on the scattering cancellation

technique relate to the realization of materials with the needed type of exotic
material parameters (e.g., materials having the relative permittivity ɛ r < 1).
There are some materials readily available in nature that have the property
of the desired low permittivity values at THz, infrared or optical frequencies
(plasmonic materials such as silver and gold). The utilization of these
plasmonic materials is limited by losses and by the fact that their material
properties vary significantly as a function of the frequency. Moreover, at a
specific frequency of interest there may not be a material with suitable
properties available at all.

One recently suggested (practically possible) design of a scattering

cancellation cloak consists of metallic parallel-plate implants placed radially
around the cylindrical region where a dielectric object (to be made invisible)
is located32. This structure is an example of a scattering cancellation device
which is composed of an artificial metamaterial, see Fig. 2.

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Fig. 2. An example design of a scattering cancellation device 32, composed of

metallic parallel plates embedded in a dielectric. The object to be made
invisible is a dielectric cylinder. Reproduced with permission from the
American Physical Society.

The benefits of the scattering cancellation technique are simple design and
structure (assuming that materials with required properties are available)
and the possibility to realize invisibility or cloaking with isotropic and
homogeneous materials. The drawbacks, depending on what kind of object
needs to be made invisible (penetrable or impenetrable object) are
realization of metamaterials with required properties if plasmonic materials
are not available, bandwidth limitations inherent to many realizable
(resonant) metamaterials, and the fundamental limitation on the energy
velocity when cloaking impenetrable objects in free space with passive
cloaks (for ideal operation the energy of the electromagnetic wave should
circle around the cloaked object faster than the speed of light).

Coordinate transformation technique

Cloaking with metamaterials that enable the creation of volumes with zero
electromagnetic fields inside a device composed of such materials, has been
recently described by Leonhardt2 and Pendry et al.3 Mathematical basis of
the coordinate transformation required in such a method has been previously
presented1, 4, 5. These techniques rely on the transformation of coordinates,
e.g., a point in the electromagnetic space is transformed into a sphere in the
physical space, thus leading to the creation of a spherical volume where
electromagnetic fields do not exist, but are instead guided around this
volume, see Fig. 3. There exist many possibilities to perform coordinate
transformations, see recent literature related to the design and analysis of
various types of cloaks based on the coordinate transformation
technique2, 3, 4, 5, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53,
54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65.

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Fig. 3. Illustration of the coordinate transformation technique 3: the rays of
electromagnetic field are guided inside the cloak device around the volume
enclosed by the cloak. Reproduced with permission from the AAAS.

Cloaking objects in free space (or in a medium similar to free space) with the
coordinate transformation technique necessarily requires the use of lossless
anisotropic metamaterials with some components of the effective relative
permittivity (ɛr) and/or permeability (μr) smaller than these values in free
space3.

The first realization of a coordinate transforming cloak, operating in the

microwave region, has been recently presented39 (Fig. 4). This structure is a
two-dimensional simplification of the general case 3 and it operates as a cloak
for one polarization only, for which the electric field is parallel to the axis of
the cylindrical cloak (TE-polarization). The simplification of the cloaking
device in terms of low dimensionality and single polarization relax the
requirements on the metamaterial properties. Another two-dimensional
simplification40, working for the TM-polarization in the visible part of the
electromagnetic spectrum, has also been proposed, but not yet realized.

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Fig. 4. A realization of a cloak based on the coordinate transformation

technique, composed of radially placed resonant particles 39. The cloak is a
two-dimensional simplification of a more general design 3 and it works only
for TE-polarized waves. Reproduced with permission from the AAAS.

One of the big challenges in the realization of metamaterial cloaks working

for arbitrary polarization of the incident fields is the need to design materials
whose permittivity is equal to the permeability. As shown in 17, this may be
possible with artificial chiral materials. In those media, the desired response
is provided by electrically small but resonant inclusions (most commonly,
metal helices). Since both electric and magnetic polarizations are provided
by the same inclusions, their shape can be chosen so that the relative
effective permittivity is the same as the permeability 66. Chirality, which is not
desired for the cloaking application, can be compensated using a racemic
mixture of spirals. Recently, such chiral cloak has been proposed 43 and its
performance demonstrated experimentally in the microwave frequency
range44.

In general, the operation of all these types of passive cloaks is limited mostly
by the strongly dispersive (and also lossy) permittivity and/or permeability
that are inherent to metamaterials needed for these types of cloaks 17,
resulting in a very narrow bandwidth where the desired cloaking effect is
possible to obtain58, 59, 60. Also, the introduction of simplifications to the
ideal values of the permittivity and permeability inevitably deteriorates the
cloaking performance61, 62.

A more fundamental design problem is related to causality restrictions of

cloaking objects in free space: the wave that travels through the cloak must
travel faster than the wave outside the cloak, as can be seen from Fig. 3 (the
ray path is longer inside the cloak). This is not impossible to achieve for
cloaking of e.g. acoustic waves63, 64, but becomes a serious problem when
cloaking electromagnetic waves in air or free space since the wave outside
the cloak travels with the speed of light65. The phase velocity of the
electromagnetic wave can of course be faster than the speed of light, but the
energy velocity in a passive system cannot. One solution is to include active
elements in the material composing the cloak 57. The latter option has the
drawback of potential field instabilities and makes the design of the
necessary types of metamaterials even more difficult and complicated 67.
Recent theoretical developments of the transformation-optics approach to
cloaking include the use of non-linear coordinate transformations41, 42 and
the idea of using different transformed spaces to the field strength tensor
(electric field and magnetic induction) and to the excitation tensor
(displacement field and magnetic field)68. Furthermore, an alternative
approach to design of artificial materials which perform the desired
transformation of distribution of electromagnetic fields in the volume
occupied by materials has been proposed69.

The benefits of the coordinate transformation technique are the simplicity of

the theoretical design and the fact that it is fundamentally independent of
the cloaked object's shape and/or constitutive material. The drawbacks are
the difficulties in the realization of materials with suitable properties,
especially when wide bandwidths and cloaking from signals (energy pulses)
are required.

Transmission-line technique

Recently we have proposed a cloaking technique which is profoundly

different from the ones discussed in the previous sections. This technique is
based on the use of volumetric structures composed of two-dimensional or
three-dimensional transmission-line networks10. In these structures, the
electromagnetic fields propagate inside transmission lines, thus leaving the
volume between these lines effectively cloaked. See Fig. 5 for an illustration
of this cloaking principle.

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Fig. 5. Illustration of the transmission-line technique for cloaking: an incident

electromagnetic wave is coupled into a transmission-line network which
leaves a volume inside the network (between the adjacent sections of
transmission lines) cloaked. The cloaked object can have any size and shape
as long as it fits inside the transmission-line network (array of smaller
objects, interconnected mesh, etc).

Since the fields entering from the surrounding medium into the cloak need to
be “squeezed” into the transmission lines, a coupling layer is needed to
couple the fields between this medium and the network. In Fig. 5 this layer is
described as a “transition layer”. We have proposed that in practice this
layer can be realized e.g. with gradually enlarging parallel-strip transmission
lines10, that effectively work as mode transformers between the cloak and
the surrounding medium. The operation of this practically realizable
transition layer has been confirmed numerically and experimentally for
various structures10, 70, 71, 72, 73.

Even though the main principle of cloaking with transmission-line networks is

very simple, it cannot overcome the following fundamental limitation: for
perfect cloaking of an object in free space, the wave velocity inside the
transmission lines should exceed the speed of light 10. This is because the
network itself “slows” down the wave, since a single transmission line sees
all the other transmission lines as periodic loads. It is possible to obtain ideal
wavenumber in a network even when cloaking objects in free space by
placing periodical reactive loads in such a network 10. However, this solution
has the inevitable drawbacks of design complexity and significant frequency
dispersion. It has therefore been concluded that for practical applications
that require large bandwidths and/or cloaking from signals, the use of simple
unloaded transmission-line networks is preferable, even though the
propagation velocity inside the cloak is not ideal 10. This is illustrated here by
conducting full-wave simulations of a homogeneous cylinder inside which the
wave travels with the same wavenumber as in a cloak composed of two-
dimensional transmission-line networks with free space filling the
transmission lines. The scattering from this “cloak” is compared to the
scattering from a two-dimensional array of perfectly conducting (PEC) rods
(Fig. 6).
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Fig. 6. Full-wave simulated74 total SCS of an infinitely long homogeneous

cylindrical object (which is composed of a material with ɛ r = μr = 2, i.e., a
material having the same wavenumber as a two-dimensional transmission-
line network with free space filling the transmission lines), normalized to the
total SCS of a two-dimensional array of infinitely long PEC rods. The
dimensions of the “cloak” cylinder and of the PEC array are shown in the
inset. The incident electric field is parallel to the axis of the cylinder.

The results can be interpreted in the following way: since the “cloak” is
perfectly matched to the surrounding free-space environment, only forward
scattering can occur. This forward scattering becomes stronger as the
electrical size of the cloak is increased, as expected. From Fig. 6 we can
conclude that even with a cloak having the diameter of 0.4λ, the total
scattering cross section of the PEC array can in principle be lowered by 75%.
There are also other regions where efficient cloaking can be achieved,
depending on the cloak's electrical size which can be even several
wavelengths10. It is clear that the cloaking effect will be inevitably less
broadband in these cases10, 72.

A cylindrical cloak as shown in Fig. 7a, b has been recently studied

numerically71, 72, 73. To obtain the total SCS of the cloaked and uncloaked
objects, we illuminate the model in Fig. 7 (cloaked object), and the same
model without the cloak, i.e., the PEC array alone, with plane waves having
the electric field parallel to the z-axis. From the resulting simulation data, we
extract the power scattered to all directions in the xy-plane and compute the
total scattering cross section in both cases. To present the cloaking
efficiency, we normalize the computed total SCS of the cloaked object to the
total SCS of the uncloaked object, similar to the case of the homogeneous
“cloak” studied above. The resulting normalized total SCS is presented in Fig.
7c. The relative bandwidth where a reasonable cloaking effect (SCS tot,n < 0.5,
i.e., reduction of the total scattering cross section by more than 50%) is
achieved, is more than 75% with the center frequency at 2.9GHz. At the
optimal cloaking frequency of 3.2GHz, the total SCS of the cloaked object is
reduced by more than 96 %, as compared to the uncloaked object.
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Fig. 7. A design of a cylindrical volumetric cloak72, 73 (periodic in the z-

direction) in xy- (a) and xz-plane (b) cuts. The cloak structure (shown in
orange) works for any incidence angle in the xy-plane for the TE-polarization,
i.e., for waves with the electric field parallel to the z-axis. The cloaked object
is a two-dimensional array of PEC rods and it is illustrated in black. (c) Full-
wave simulated74 total scattering cross section of the cloaked object,
normalized to that of the uncloaked object. Dimensions of the simulated
cloak and object are illustrated in the inset of (c).

The benefits of the transmission-line technique are the simple structure,

ease of manufacturing and assembly, and wide-band operation. The most
significant drawback of this approach, especially when compared to the
previously discussed techniques, is the limitation on the size and shape of
the cloaked object.

Experimental results on cloaking with volumetric transmission-line cloaks

As the realization of metamaterials, and especially those needed for

coordinate-transformation cloaks or for scattering cancellation, is rather
difficult, there have been very few experimental results related to these
cloaking techniques39, 44. The transmission-line approach on the other hand
offers a way of obtaining efficient cloaking with very simple structures. We
have recently studied how a realization of the transition layer, based on
extending parallel strip transmission lines, works with the unavoidable non-
idealities that are related to manufacturing and assembly 70. In this case a
two-dimensional transmission-line network having a square shape was
studied and the goal of the study was to demonstrate excellent coupling of
waves between free space and an easily realizable cloaking network. The
good coupling of TE-polarized electromagnetic waves, emitted by a
cylindrical source placed close to the network, was verified with numerical
simulations and measurements70.

We have also experimentally demonstrated the cloaking phenomenon with a

cylindrical volumetric cloak as that shown in Fig. 773. Such a cloak was
manufactured by etching from sheets of 200μm thick metal (alloy of Bronze
and Beryllium). Four layers of the structure of Fig. 7 were stacked on top of
each other creating a volumetric cloak. For measuring the frequency
response of the cloak, the measurements were done in a waveguide
environment73. The cloaked object is a two-dimensional array of vertical
metallic rods (as that shown in Fig. 7), which causes a short-circuit in the
waveguide.

Here we have modified the cloaked object to be a fully three-dimensional

object, connecting metallic cylinders periodically to the array of metallic
rods. Fig. 8a shows a photograph of the cloak, enclosing the cloaked object,
placed in the measurement waveguide. Fig. 8b illustrates the cloaked object
alone. Between the transmission lines of the cloak and the metallic cloaked
object, dielectric foam having the relative permittivity ɛ r≈1.05 is placed to
ensure good insulation.
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Fig. 8. (a) Photograph of the transmission-line cloak enclosing the cloaked

metallic object (the top wall of the waveguide is removed for clarity). (b)
Cloaked object alone.
The transmission through the waveguide was measured in three cases: 1)
empty waveguide, 2) waveguide with the uncloaked metallic object inside,
and 3) waveguide with the cloaked object inside. Fig. 9 shows the results of
magnitude and phase of the transmission (S 21) through the waveguide. The
magnitudes of the transmission in the cloaked case and the empty case are
very much alike, whereas in the uncloaked case, almost no power is
transmitted through the waveguide. The results indicate that the cloak works
as expected, even in a realistic scenario where all the manufacturing errors,
errors due to manual assembly etc., are present. The slight difference in the
phase of S21, shown in Fig 9b, is due to the non-ideal wavenumber inside the
cloak10. This non-ideality will not prevent efficient cloaking, as long as the
electrical size of the cloak is sufficiently small as compared to the
wavelength, see Fig. 6, Fig. 7.

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Fig. 9. (a) Measured transmission magnitude for the empty waveguide,

waveguide with the uncloaked object inside and waveguide with the cloaked
object inside. (b) Measured transmission phase for the empty waveguide and
the waveguide with the cloaked object inside.

The realized “composite material”, described above, is mechanically very

strong and is a good conductor, as it consists of an interconnected mesh of
metal rods and cylinders. Yet, it is “invisible” for vertically polarized
microwave radiation even if the waves are incident to the structure from an
arbitrary direction in the transverse plane.

Other cloaking techniques

Other cloaking techniques also exist which do not fit into any of the
categories discussed so far in this paper. One such technique was proposed
by Kildal and his co-authors already more than ten years ago 11. That
technique is based on covering an object, composed of, for example, metal,
with a so-called hard surface having an elongated shape in the direction of
wave propagation. It has been shown that this technique can be effectively
used for reducing the forward scattering from such objects, thus resulting in
reduction of the total scattering cross section 11. The clear drawback of this
technique is that the cloaking effect strongly depends on the angle of arrival
of the impinging electromagnetic wave. This is a logical consequence of the
fact that the “cloaking” device is not symmetrical, but has an elongated
shape. Nevertheless, this technique can be used for cloaking in such
applications where the angle of the incidence is known, for example in
reducing the scattering from antenna support struts 11.

Another very exotic cloaking technique, put forward by Milton, Nicorovici and
their co-authors, is based on the use of a so-called “superlens” 17 to cloak
scattering objects placed close to such a device12, 75, 76. This cloaking
phenomenon relies on the anomalous localized resonances that can be
excited at the surface of a superlens. One special property of this cloaking
technique is that cloaking can be achieved for objects placed outside the
“cloaking device”75. As the cloaking method relies on the anomalous
resonance phenomenon, it is expected to be very sensitive to losses and
manufacturing errors.

Conclusions

Cloaking and invisibility have, in recent years, become facts instead of

fiction, after the discovery and realization of various types of metamaterials
and plasmonic materials. Many different techniques exist to obtain cloaking
from electromagnetic or acoustic waves, and all these techniques have
certain benefits and drawbacks as compared to each other. In this paper, we
have discussed the principles of the two main cloaking techniques, namely,
the coordinate transformation technique and the scattering cancellation
technique. In addition, we have reviewed some recent results related to an
alternative cloaking technique, which employs networks of transmission
lines. References to other cloaking techniques are also given. Currently, the
research related to cloaking aims to extend the achievable bandwidths
where invisibility of arbitrary or specific objects can be achieved, as well as
to extend the realization of such devices into the optical frequency range.
Some fundamental restrictions on cloaking, especially with passive devices,
exist, but nevertheless, examples of devices exhibiting effective cloaking,
although not perfect, have been realized recently.

Acknowledgements

The work of P. Alitalo and S. Tretyakov has been partly funded by the
Academy of Finland through the Center-of-Excellence program. During this
work P. Alitalo was an invited researcher at EPFL-Switzerland. P. Alitalo
acknowledges financial support by the Finnish Graduate School in
Electronics, Telecommunications, and Automation (GETA), the Emil Aaltonen
Foundation, and the Nokia Foundation. Commercial associations do not pose
any conflict of interest.