METATOYs: metamaterials (arguably) for light rays

The official METATOY project poster.

When a volume or area is filled with miniaturized optical components, sometimes interesting things happen. This can be the case if the miniaturized optical components are sub-wavelength-size electro-magnetic circuits that are resonant with the optical frequency, which results in a metamaterial. It can also be the case if the miniaturized optical components are prisms or combinations of lenses that cover an area; we call the result a METATOY (metamaterial for light rays).

METATOYs are transparent windows that change the direction of light rays: they map the direction of an incident light ray into a corresponding direction of the transmitted light ray; one of our favourites is rotation of the light-ray direction around the local window normal, which can be explored further here. The ray-optics limit of wave optics normally restricts what mappings can be applied to any light field (ray rotation can't). However, as METATOYs happily introduce discontinuities into the wave front, they are not subject to this restriction. They can therefore perform light-ray-direction changes that would not normally be considered.

We have played (in a very scientific way!) with a number of different aspects of METATOYs. These include

• an elegant mathematical description of the effect of METATOYs, with the aim of developing an optical-design framework for METATOYs;
• the bizarre visual properties of METATOYs -- explore these interactively with TIM: The Interactive METATOY;
• basic wave optics of METATOYs;
• progress towards a METATOY that performs the most general mapping of light-ray directions;
• speculations on the limits of the imaging properties of METATOYs;
• and actually building METATOYs.

An overview of everything related to METATOYs can be found in the Wikipedia entry on METATOYs. Below is a list of our papers to date, newest first.

2012 publications
	TIM, ray-tracing program for METATOY research and its dissemination Dean Lambert, Alasdair C. Hamilton, George Constable, Harsh Snehanshu, Sharvil Talati, and Johannes Courtial, download PDF; restricted link Comp. Phys. Commun. 183, 711-732 (2012) doi: 10.1016/j.cpc.2011.11.011 (January 2012) (TIM himself can be found here.)
2011 publications
	METATOYs and optical vortices Johannes Courtial and Tomas Tyc, download PDF; restricted link J. Opt. 13, 115704 (2011) doi: 10.1088/2040-8978/13/11/115704 (November 2011)
	Quantifying metarefraction with confocal lenslet arrays Tautvydas Maceina, Gediminas Juzeliunas, and Johannes Courtial, download PDF; restricted link Opt. Commun. 284, 5008-5019 (2011) doi: 10.1016/j.optcom.2011.06.058, arXiv:1104.2694v3 [physics.optics] (August 2011)
2010 publications
	Experimental demonstration of ray-optical refraction with confocal lenslet arrays Johannes Courtial, Blair C. Kirkpatrick, Eric Logean, and Toralf Scharf, download PDF; restricted link Opt. Lett. 35, 4060-4062 (2010) doi: 10.1364/OL.35.004060 (November 2010)
	Local light-ray rotation around arbitrary axes Alasdair C. Hamilton, Bhuvanesh Sundar, and Johannes Courtial, download PDF; restricted link J. Opt. 12, 095101 (2010) doi: 10.1088/2040-8978/12/9/095101 (August 2010)
2009 publications
	Experimental demonstration of a light-ray-direction-flipping METATOY based on confocal lenticular arrays Michael Blair, Leo Clark, E. Alasdair Houston, Gary Smith, Jonathan Leach, Alasdair C. Hamilton, and Johannes Courtial, download PDF; restricted link Opt. Commun. 282, 4299-4302 (2009) doi: 10.1016/j.optcom.2009.07.035, download author-typeset PDF arXiv:0902.3192 [physics.optics] (September 2009)
	Local light-ray rotation Alasdair C. Hamilton, Bhuvanesh Sundar, John Nelson, and Johannes Courtial, download PDF; restricted link J. Opt. A: Pure Appl. Opt. 11, 085705 (2009) doi: 10.1088/1464-4258/11/8/085705, download author-typeset PDF arXiv:0809.2646 [physics.optics] (May 2009)
	Standard and non-standard metarefraction with confocal lenslet arrays Johannes Courtial, download PDF; restricted link Opt. Commun. 282, 2634-2641 (2009) doi: 10.1016/j.optcom.2009.03.046, "download author-typeset PDF arXiv:0901.3294 [physics.optics] (May 2009)
	Geometric limits to geometric optical imaging with infinite, planar, non-absorbing sheets Johannes Courtial, download PDF; restricted link Opt. Commun. 282, 2480-2483 (2009) doi: 10.1016/j.optcom.2009.03.036, download author-typeset PDF arXiv:0901.3669 [physics.optics] (May 2009)
	Generalized refraction using lenslet arrays Alasdair C. Hamilton and Johannes Courtial, download PDF; restricted link J. Opt. A: Pure Appl. Opt. 11, 065502 (2009) doi: 10.1088/1464-4258/11/6/065502, download author-typeset PDF arXiv:0901.3250 [physics.optics] (March 2009)
	Fermat's principle with complex refractive indices and local light-ray rotation Bhuvanesh Sundar, Alasdair C. Hamilton, and Johannes Courtial, download PDF; restricted link Opt. Lett. 34, 374-376 (2009) doi: 10.1364/OL.34.000374, download author-typeset PDF arXiv:0809.4350 [physics.optics] (January 2009)
	Metamaterials for light rays: ray optics without wave-optical analog in the ray-optics limit Alasdair C. Hamilton and Johannes Courtial, download PDF; restricted link New J. Phys. 11, 013042 (2009) doi: 10.1088/1367-2630/11/1/013042, arXiv:0809.4370 [physics.optics] (January 2009)
2008 publications
	Imaging with parallel ray-rotation sheets Alasdair C. Hamilton and Johannes Courtial, download PDF; restricted link Opt. Express 16, 20826-20833 (2008) doi: 10.1364/OE.16.020826, arXiv:0809.4347 [physics.optics] (December 2008)
	Optical properties of a Dove-prism sheet Alasdair C. Hamilton and Johannes Courtial, download PDF; restricted link J. Opt. A: Pure Appl. Opt. 10, 125302 (2008) doi: 10.1088/1464-4258/10/12/125302 (November 2008)
	Ray-optical refraction with confocal lenslet arrays Johannes Courtial, download PDF New J. Phys. 10, 083033 (2008) doi: 10.1088/1367-2630/10/8/083033 (August 2008)
	Ray-optical negative refraction and pseudoscopic imaging with Dove-prism arrays Johannes Courtial and John Nelson, download PDF New J. Phys. 10, 023028 (2008) doi: 10.1088/1367-2630/10/2/023028 (February 2008)
questions, comments, ...
	Please contact Johannes Courtial.