Dispersive cylindrical cloaks under nonmonochromatic illumination

Transformation-based cylindrical cloaks and concentrators are illuminated with nonmonochromatic waves and unusual effects are observed with interesting potential applications. The transient responses of the devices are studied numerically with the finite-difference time-domain method and the results are verified with analytical formulas. We compute the effective bandwidth of several cloaking schemes as well as the effect of losses on the performance of the structures. We also find that narrowband behavior, frequency shift effects, time delays, and spatial disturbances of the incoming waves are dominant due to the inherently dispersive nature of the devices. These effects are important and should be taken into account when designing metamaterial-based devices.