Far field broadband approximate cloaking for the Helmholtz equation with a Drude-Lorentz refractive index

Abstract

This paper concerns the analysis of a passive, broadband approximate cloaking scheme for the Helmholtz equation in $R^d$ for $d=2$ or $d=3$. Using ideas from transformation optics, we construct an approximate cloak by “blowing up” a small ball of radius $ϵ>0$ to one of radius 1. In the anisotropic cloaking layer resulting from the “blow-up” change of variables, we incorporate a Drude-Lorentz-type model for the index of refraction, and we assume that the cloaked object is a soft (perfectly conducting) obstacle. We first show that (for any fixed ϵ) there are no real transmission eigenvalues associated with the inhomogeneity representing the cloak, which implies that the cloaking devices we have created will not yield perfect cloaking at any frequency, even for a single incident time harmonic wave. Secondly, we establish estimates on the scattered field due to an arbitrary time harmonic incident wave. These estimates show that, as ϵ approaches 0, the $L^2$-norm of the scattered field outside the cloak, and its far field pattern, approach 0 uniformly over any bounded band of frequencies. In other words: our scheme leads to broadband approximate cloaking for arbitrary incident time harmonic waves.