Negative refraction

Light bends the wrong way in materials where both ε and μ are negative as was pointed out in 1968, but the absence of natural materials with this property led to neglect of the subject until 1999 when it was shown how to make artificial materials, metamaterials, with negative μ. The rapid advance of the subject since that date, both in theory and experiment, is reflected in the exponential growth of publications now at the 200 per year level and still growing. This interest is explained by the sudden availability of a qualitatively different class of electromagnetic materials combined with the quite startling properties which these materials appear to have; all of which provokes debate as each new facet of their behaviour is revealed. Experiment has been vital to resolution of controversy and has chiefly been in the microwave region of the spectrum though there is potential in the optical region currently being explored by several groups.     

The properties of helium atoms and as impurities in metals

When the atoms of simple metals condense from the gas phase to give a solid, the valence electron wavefunctions are strongly modified by their overlap. At first sight this strong overlap might be expected to produce a complex situation, difficult to treat quantitatively. Yet the simple metals are perhaps the best understood of all solids and the reason is that the electron wavefunctions are plane-wave-like to a first approximation and deviations can be treated by perturbation theory.     

Interaction between plasmonic nanoparticles revisited with transformation optics

The interaction between plasmonic nanoparticles is investigated by means of transformation optics. The optical response of a dimer can be decomposed as a sum of modes whose resonances redshift when the nanoparticles approach each other. The extinction and scattering cross sections as well as the field enhancement induced by the dimer are derived analytically taking into account radiation damping. Interestingly, some invisibility dips occur in the scattering spectrum and originate from a destructive interference between each surface plasmon mode.     

Low energy electron diffraction from Na(110) and Na2O(111) surfaces

Surfaces ofNa(110) are grown, investigated and oxidised to give Na₂O(111) surfaces. LEED spectra are taken for these surfaces and compared with theory to determine the surface composition of sodium oxide: the surface terminates the crystal in an integral number of electrically neutral NaONa sandwiches, with a bulk-like inter layer spacing. The effective Debye temperature for the Na(110) surface was found to be 107 K.