超材料作为一种突破性的人工设计材料,在电磁波调控领域起到了革命性的作用。变换光学与超材料的结合不仅可以充分发挥超材料的奇妙特性,实现许多神奇的效应,还可以用作光学模拟,展现一些无法直接观测到的宇宙学现象。由于超材料自身结构的局限性,有些电磁参数仍无法通过微结构的调控来实现,这时曲面开始受到人们的关注。曲面结构的波导也可以对电磁波起到调控的作用,更可以突破超材料的一些限制,实现许多新奇的效应。通过介绍南京大学刘辉课题组在曲面结构波导上的一系列工作,展示了曲面波导在各个方向上的奇妙应用,并讨论了曲面波导的应用前景。

Metamaterial, as a groundbreaking artificial material, plays a revolutionary role in the field of electromagnetic wave control. A combination of transformation optics with metamaterials can not only give full play to the wonderful properties of metamaterials and realize many magical effects but also be applied to optical simulation, displaying some cosmological phenomena that cannot be observed directly. However, due to the limitation of the metamaterial structure, some electromagnetic parameters cannot be controlled by the microstructure, and then curved surfaces start to attract attention of people. It has been found that waveguides with curved structures can also regulate electromagnetic waves and break through some limitations of metamaterials to achieve many novel effects. By introducing a series of work on curved waveguides by research group of Liu Hui in Nanjing University, the wonderful applications of curved waveguides in various directions are demonstrated, and the application prospects of curved waveguides are discussed.