Thursday, January 9, 2014

First light-bending calculator designed with metamaterials - physics-math - 09 January 2014 - New Scientist

First light-bending calculator designed with metamaterials - physics-math - 09 January 2014 - New Scientist: The metamaterial computer works because light waves can draw mathematical curves in space, akin to a graph. In calculus, differentiation describes the slope of that curve at various points, while integration gives the area under the curve.

The team's metamaterial block can perform these calculations by modifying the light wave's profile. For example, if you shine a light wave describing a parabola (which corresponds to the equation y = x2) into a metamaterial that computes differentiation, it will come out the other side looking like a straight line described by y = 2x.siu

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