German scientists have created a three-dimensional invisibility cloak that can hide objects by bending light waves.德国科学家近日研制出一种通过倾斜光线来隐蔽物体的三维“隐形斗篷”。The findings, published in the journal Science on Thursday, could in the future make it possible to make large objects invisible, but for now the researchers said they were not keen to speculate on possible applications.这项发明者为大型物体隐形铺平了道路，但研究人员称之为，目前他们并想去猜测有可能的应用于形式。这一近期研究成果于上周四在《科学》期刊上公开发表。
For now these...cloaking devices are just a beautiful and exciting benchmark to show what transformation optics can do, said Tolga Ergin of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.德国卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院的研究人员托尔加·埃尔金说道：“目前，这种隐形斗篷只是光学领域一个‘精彩’的开始，让人们告诉切换光学可以做到些什么。”Transformation optics use a class of materials called metamaterials that guide and control light.切换光学一般来说用于一种“超强材料”来引领和掌控光束。In their study, Ergin and his colleagues used photonic crystals with a structure that looks like piles of wood to make an invisibility device, or cloak.埃尔金及其同事在研究中用于了一种光子晶体来生产隐形斗篷。
这种光子晶体的结构看起来像成堆的木头。They used the cloak to conceal a small bump on a gold surface -- a bit like hiding a small object underneath a carpet and then making both the bump and the carpet invisible.研究人员用于隐形斗篷来掩饰黄金表面的一个小突起，其原理就如同将一个小物体隐蔽在地毯下，然后再行使这个突起和地毯都隐形。The cloak was composed of special lenses that work by partially bending light waves to suppress the light scattering from the bump.这个“斗篷”由类似透镜构成，它通过部分倾斜可见光线来诱导突起收到的光。
This is very exciting, because mankind has always thought about being invisible or having invisibility cloaks, Ergin told the reporters in a telephone interview. This is the first proof of principle. It shows that the technique works.埃尔金在拒绝接受一个电话专访时说：“这一发明者十分令人激动，因为人类仍然都想要隐形或享有隐形斗篷。这是我们的首个隐形样本，显然这一技术是不切实际的。”He added, however, that it would be many years before anything as large as a person, car or tank could be made to disappear with this technique.但他指出，利用上述技术使人、汽车、坦克等大型物体隐形尚需时日。There have been proposals in the field of transformation optics for different devices like beam concentrators, beam shifters, super antennas which concentrate light into one point from all directions, and much, much more, he said.他说道：“切换光学领域曾经常出现过各种有关光学设备的建议，如波束集中器、波束移位器以及可将来自多个方向的光集中于一点的超级天线等等。
”It is really hard to say what the future will bring, but the field is definitely very broad and the possibilities are very large.“很难说将来还不会有什么发明者，但切换光学意味著是个范围广、充满著无限有可能的领域。
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