The following news conference has just been added to the schedule of the March Meeting of the American Physical Society. The meeting will take place March 20-24 at the Minneapolis Convention Center. The extra press conference will occur in room 203B of the Center, on March 21 at 1 PM Central Time. It will feature Sheldon Schultz of UC San Diego who will report on a new composite material with novel properties.

For more information next week, at the APS pressroom, please contact Phillip Schewe or Ben Stein at these phone numbers: 612-335-6735, 6736, 6737, 6738. The general meeting website, including all the abstracts, is http://www.aps.org/meet/MAR00/baps/index.html (choose "Epitome" to see the full program).

SUMMARY OF POSTDEADLINE PAPER S36.188 A NEW COMPOSITE MATERIAL WITH 'REVERSED' PHYSICAL PROPERTIES

Physicists have created a new class of composite material with unusual electromagnetic properties different from anything observed before--in the lab or in nature. Predicted to exist in an article published in 1968 by a Russian physicist, but not technically possible until now, the materials are known as "left-handed media"--and they have the reverse effect on electromagnetic radiation as do normal "right-handed media." Sheldon Schultz, David R. Smith and their colleagues at UC-San Diego have constructed the first such material, designed to exhibit these effects for incoming microwaves. If the same material were designed for optical (light) waves, light entering this material would refract, or "bend," in the reverse way; and light rays that would diverge in a lens constructed from ordinary material would instead focus in these new structures.

These materials will likely have exciting and wide applications (patents are pending) in such areas as wireless communications. The UCSD composite is made of a series of thin copper rings and ordinary copper wire strung parallel to the rings. What makes this new material unique is that it possesses simultaneously a negative electrical permittivity and a negative magnetic permeability. The permittivity (also known as the dielectric constant) determines how a substance interacts with an applied electric field. The permeability determines how a substance responds to an applied magnetic field. As electromagnetic radiation contains both electric and magnetic fields, the permittivity and permeability completely determine how a material interacts with light.

-----This research has just been accepted for publication in a future issue of Physical Review Letters.

-----A UCSD press release is available from Kim McDonald, 858-534-7572.

-----David Smith can be reached March 18-22 in Minneapolis at 612-331-1900. His office number in San Diego is 858-534-1510. Sheldon Schultz can be reached March 18-23 in Minneapolis at 612-333-4545. His office number is 858-534-6210.

------------Website: A video showing the difference in electromagnetic pulses in left-handed and right-handed materials can be obtained at http://sdss.ucsd.edu/~rshelby/

The website also contains a graphic showing how electromagnetic radiation would be dispersed or focused in the new left-handed material. Credit: Sheldon Schultz, UCSD