Physically-Based Simulation and Visualization of Optical Phenomena Elicited by Negative Refraction

Abstract

Metamaterials characterized by a negative refractive index are being the object of intense research across a broad range of fields, from mathematics and physics to photonics and engineering. Nonetheless, the development of materials exhibiting this property in the visible spectral domain remains challenging. This situation, along with their potential transformative role in new technological advances, has motivated the scientific community to instrumentally employ computer graphics software to visually explore their interactions with light. In this work, we contribute to the initiatives in this area by describing a white-box methodology aimed at the physically-based simulation and visualization of optical phenomena elicited by these materials. We demonstrate its suitability to applications, both within and outside computer graphics, through the rendering of images depicting these phenomena under different optical scenarios, including those not examined in the literature to date.