"I show that it is easier to make only one polarization negatively refracting. This offers a new route to negative refraction, one that can be exploited in atomic physics experiments."

Negative refraction is currently quite a hot topic of research. My paper gives a new way of producing this effect.

  Would you summarize the significance of your paper in layman’s terms?

The refractive index describes how a material bends light as it enters the material. A pencil half-immersed in water appears to be bent at the interface because of the effect of refraction. Negative refraction, on the other hand, is a very strange effect: in the case of the pencil in negatively refracting water (if that were possible) the pencil would appear to be bent right out of the water!

Obviously, negative refraction enables us to achieve some extraordinary effects, but making materials that show the effect is not easy. My theory exploits the polarization of light into left- and right-handed components, which normally behave in the same fashion except in materials that are chiral—in other words, components which are not symmetric upon reflection in a mirror. I show that it is easier to make only one polarization negatively refracting. This offers a new route to negative refraction, one that can be exploited in atomic physics experiments.

  How did you become involved in this research and were any particular problems encountered along the way?

I was already working on negatively refracting materials and by accident designed a structure that was chiral. I noticed that this was an easier structure to make than the ones we used already and hence my article in Science.

  Where do you see your research leading in the future?

Negative refraction holds many possibilities, but the most fascinating is that it offers the possibility of a lens whose resolution is not limited by the wavelength, as it is for a normal lens, but only by the perfection with which it can be manufactured.