4. Conclusions

Opticians know how to give a composite material the anisotropy needed to control almost at will the trajectory and speed of light propagating within it. Optical fibers, for example, have accompanied the Internet revolution, earning British-American engineer Charles Kao a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009. In the years to come, the virtually dispersion- and loss-free propagation of light in the hollow core of a new generation of so-called micro-structured fibers will open up a host of new prospects, including new optical sources. Micro-structured fibers were introduced by British physicist Philip Russell in 1991, and exploit the bandgap of a photonic crystal surrounding the core.

But it gets even more amazing: the phenomenon of negative refraction, predicted by Moscow physicist Victor Veselago in 1968