Résumé / Abstract Seminaire_IAP
« Time Machine and waves »

Mathias Fink
ESPCI Paris Tech (Paris, France)

The objective of this talk is to show that time-reversal invariance that occurs everywhere in fundamental physics except in an esoteric corner of the weak nuclear interactions can be exploit to create a large variety of instruments. It is in the field of wave physics that time-reversal mirrors can be built easily thanks to multi-antenna technology. Such mirrors allow to refocuses in space and time an incident wave field at the original source location regardless of the complexity of the propagation medium. They have been developed for all kind of waves (acoustic, microwave, optics and water wave).
Contrary to intuition, a remarkable property was shown: the more complex the propagation medium, the sharper the focus. Such results have been recently extended to focus on spots much smaller than the wavelength using new sub-wavelength structured media, opening new avenues toward super-resolution imaging.
Time reversal mirrors are not only unique research tools in the field of fundamentals physics but they have plenty applications including therapy, medical imaging, telecommunications, seismology, human-machine interface.
vendredi 18 septembre 2015 - 11:00
Amphithéâtre Henri Mineur, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
Page web du séminaire / Seminar's webpage