Departmental Colloquia Autumn 2015

All seminars (unless otherwise stated) will take place on Tuesdays at 3.00pm in Room 505 in the Mathematics Department (25 Gordon Street).

See see how to find us for further details. There will be tea afterwards in Maths Room 606. If you require any more information on the Departmental Colloquia please contact Prof Dima Vassiliev e-mail: d.vassiliev AT ucl.ac.uk or tel: 020-7679-2442.

3 November 2015 - COLLOQUIUM TALK

Prof John Willis - Centre for Mathematical Sciences Wilberforce Road, University of Cambridge

Title: The constitutive response of metamaterials

Abstract: A metamaterial is nothing more than a composite material, designed so as to have properties not usually found in nature but nevertheless allowed by the basic laws of physics - for instance a material with simultaneously negative dielectric constant and magnetic permeability, or with simultaneously negative elastic modulus and mass density within some range of frequencies. I shall describe a general approach towards defining effective properties of composite materials, develop some explicit formulae for the case of elastodynamics and show some simple example calculations for a laminate which demonstrate the possibility of quite complex response.