Why ‘Event Cloaks’ Could Be The Key To The Ultimate Bank Heist

July 1, 2011

In this month’s special issue of Physics World, which examines the science and applications of invisibility, Martin McCall and Paul Kinsler of Imperial College London describe a new type of invisibility cloak that does not just hide objects ““ but events.

Using the ultimate bank heist as an example, McCall and Kinsler explain how a thief could, in principle, use an “event cloak” to steal money from a safe, without even the CCTV surveillance cameras being aware.

The burglar would somehow need to split all the light approaching the safe into two parts: “before” and “after”, with the “before” part sped up and the “after” part slowed down.




For these aspirations to become a reality, suitable materials need to be developed that can manipulate the light to speed it up or slow it down. The consensus seems to be that a set of parallel, artificially structured “metamaterial” layers would be needed, each containing an array of tiny metallic elements that can be controlled to dynamically adjust the speed of light passing through.

If a high-performance, macroscopic-size, fully functional space”“time cloak could be developed, one potential “party trick” could be a Star Trek-type transporter, in which a person could appear to instantly relocate from one point to another.

Although no-one has yet tried to build a space”“time cloak in the lab, McCall and Kinsler argue that “there is no obvious reason why such a cloak could not be achieved quite soon, perhaps even within a few years”.

Also in this month’s special issue on invisibility.

    * Invisibility is now a reality, but scientists are not satisfied and are still searching for the holy grail ““ a cloak of invisibility that can hide macroscale objects from view at any angle, using unpolarized visible light. Wenshan Cai and Vladimir Shalaev map out the road ahead on this mission.



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