Harry Potter's Cloak
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Prof. Gunther Uhlmann
Walker Family Endowed Professor of Mathematics, University of Washington
Si Yuan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, HKUST
Simons Fellowship, 2013-2014
Foreign Member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2013
AMS Fellowship, 2012
SIAM Kleinman Prize, 2011
AMS Bocher Prize, 2011
SIAM Fellowship, 2010
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2009
Guggenheim Fellowship, 2001-02
(Poster)
(Photo)
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Date: |
20 November 2014 (Thursday) |
Time: |
5:00pm - 6:00pm (Preceded by Reception at 4:30pm) |
Venue: |
WLB104, Mrs Padma Harilela Lecture Theatre,
The Wing Lung Bank Building for Business Studies,
Shaw Campus, Hong Kong Baptist University
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Abstract
Invisibility has been a subject of human fascination for millenia, from the Greek legend of Perseus
versus Medusa to the more recent The Invisible Man, The Invisible Woman, Star Trek and Harry Potter,
among many others.
Over the years, there have been occasional scientific prescriptions for invisibility in various settings
but the route to cloaking that has received the most attention has been transformation optics. To
achieve invisibility one can design materials that would steer light around a hidden region, returning it
to its original path on the far side. Not only would observers be unaware of the contents of the hidden
region, they would not even be aware that something was being hidden.
As Science Magazine stated in 2006 in naming cloaking one of the 10 breakthroughs of the year: "...no
matter how you look at it the ideas behind invisibility are likely to cast a long shadow". I will discuss the
Mathematics behind these ideas.
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All
are welcome |
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