Invisible materials, simulation of breaking wave dispersion

Super efficient simulator

Imagine a future where the invisibility cloak so present in science fiction stories can become a reality, thanks to new software developed by researchers at Macquarie University, that future could be closer than ever.

This software capable of accurately simulating the dispersion of complex waves promises to revolutionize the design of meta materials, a type of artificial material with extraordinary properties, but what makes this technology so special, the software allows modeling different types of waves, whether Whether sound, water or light interact with complex configurations of particles, this means that scientists can now design and test metamaterials much more quickly and efficiently, accelerating the creation of materials that can amplify, block or deflect these waves.

Software that accelerates the process of creating new materials.

The researchers' great challenge was to find a way to quickly simulate the behavior of waves in complicated structures such as metamaterials, but they managed to overcome this barrier with an innovative formulation that simply and directly describes the behavior of multipolar structures.

This formulation is implemented in a software called TMATSOLVER which is already being considered an essential tool for researchers around the world, published in the renowned journal proceedings of the Royal society, the study of such as TMATSOLVER can easily simulate the interaction between waves and up to hundreds of particles, even those with complex shapes and properties, and all this is possible thanks to a concept known as a transition matrix or T-matrix.

A grid of numbers that accurately describes how an object scatters waves around it, Dr. Hawkins, lead author of the study, explains that the T-matrix has been used since the 1960s, but the big breakthrough is in its ability to calculate with precision the dispersion of waves into particles much larger than the wavelength and with “irregular” shapes.

New innovations from now on.

“With TMATSOLVER we can now model particles that were previously out of the reach of traditional simulations,” said the researcher; For those who are not familiar, metamaterials are materials designed to interact with waves in completely new ways, manipulating them to achieve results impossible in nature.

They are already being used in incredible applications, such as super lenses that allow objects to be viewed at a molecular scale, even invisibility cloaks that refract light to hide objects from view; This breakthrough is the beginning; As the use of TMATSOLVER expands it is possible that meta materials technology that previously existed in dreams.