Hidden progress: broadband plasmonic invisibility

One of the key challenges in current research into electromagnetic cloaking is to achieve invisibility at optical frequencies and over an extended bandwidth. There has been significant progress towards this using the idea of cloaking by sweeping under the carpet of Li and Pendry. Here, we show that we can harness surface plasmon polaritons at a metal surface structured with a dielectric material to obtain a unique control of their propagation. We exploit this control to demonstrate both theoretically and experimentally cloaking over an unprecedented bandwidth (650-900 nm). Our non-resonant plasmonic metamaterial is designed using transformational optics extended to plasmonics and allows a curved reflector to mimic a flat mirror. Our theoretical predictions are validated by experiments mapping the surface light intensity at a wavelength of 800 nm. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America