Illusion induced overlapped optics

The traditional transformation-based cloak seems like it can only hide objects by bending the incident electromagnetic waves around the hidden region. In this paper, we prove that invisible cloaks can be applied to realize the overlapped optics. No matter how many in-phase point sources are located in the hidden region, all of them can overlap each other (this can be considered as illusion effect), leading to the perfect optical interference effect. In addition, a singular parameter-independent cloak is also designed to obtain quasi-overlapped optics. Even more amazing of overlapped optics is that if N identical separated in-phase point sources covered with the illusion media, the total power outside the transformation region is N2I0 (not NI0) (I0 is the power of just one point source, and N is the number point sources), which seems violating the law of conservation of energy. A theoretical model based on interference effect is proposed to interpret the total power of these two kinds of overlapped optics effects. Our investigation may have wide applications in high power coherent laser beams, and multiple laser diodes, and so on. (C)2014 Optical Society of America