Second-year Durham undergraduate and theoretical physicst, Maria Athina Vogiatzi (pictured) recently wrote an article on Acoustic Metamaterials (AMMs). Her work has gone beyond the areas of study covered in her course, to explore an innovative field that first emerged in the 1990s and has applications in acoustic cloaking and quantum optomechanics.
Selected for publication via the article section of DIRDI’s website, Athina’s paper covers phenomena such as superlenses, Helmholtz resonators, and resonant scatterers, structures on the microscale that bestow unique properties to a material that would otherwise not be present. For example, superlenses have a negative refractive index, allowing for imaging beyond the diffraction limit and theoretically enabling subwavelength imaging.
Describing her experience writing her article, Athina remarked, “I was interested in writing about AMM, because it is an emerging field of research with many promising developments and potential applications in industry. Furthermore, it has been fascinating learning about the physics that drives AMM to have such unusual properties. I found the experience of writing the article very rewarding as I had the opportunity to read the scientific literature and delve into the cutting edge of knowledge.”
Her article is available in full for free at https://dirdi.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/AMM-and-future-research-challenges.pdf.
