Arrays of coupled plasmonic coaxial waveguides offer a new approach by which to realize negative-index metamaterials that are remarkably insensitive to angle of incidence and polarization in the visible range. [Credit: Caltech/Stanley Burgos]

(California Institute of Technology: Pasadena, CA) -- A group of scientists led by researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has engineered a type of artificial optical material—a metamaterial—with a particular 3-D structure such that light exhibits a negative index of refraction upon entering the material. In other words, this material bends light in the “wrong” direction from what normally would be expected, irrespective of the angle of the approaching light.

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