Transformation optics tells us how a distortion of space, and the objects it contains, maps into changes of the effective electric and magnetic responses of the distorted materials. This can be exploited to generate new devices from familiar ones. For example it is well known that a slab of negatively refracting material has lens like properties and can focus light. However the images are always of exactly the same size as the objects. This restriction can be lifted by applying transformation optics to create a negatively refracting magnifying lens that also has the property of sub wavelength. In the exact formulation both electrical and magnetic properties are equally affected by the transformation, but in the near field approximation at optical frequencies we can neglect the magnetic component. This leads to some novel devices that will be described in this class. |