Physics World |
Volume 13, Page
27 |
2000 |
J.B. Pendry
How familiar and safe is the concept of a refractive index: wine glasses sparkle, deep pools appear shallow, camera lenses focus sharp images. ‘Ah yes, light bends towards
the surface normal - Snell's law’ and we move on to more interesting topics. My complacency was recently given a jolt by Sheldon Schultz and David Smith of UCSD
who reported at the recent American Physical Society meeting in Minneapolis that they had made a material with negative refractive index.
This
paper is available as a PDF file.