DARPA’s NLM developing systematic approaches of designing metamaterials for imaging, AR Glasses and EMDrive.

The ability to design and fabricate materials with new functionalities opens the door to a new world of possibilities. They can be tailored to either augment the functionality of existing devices or create new devices with superior performances. EnMats are broadly defined to include, but are not limited to, metamaterials (both metallic and dielectric), scattering surfaces and volumes, holographic structures, and diffractive elements.

 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)  announced a new program designed to better understand and ultimately improve metamaterials. The program could lead to improvements in a number of areas, including imaging, thermal control and frequency conversion. NLM program,  seeks to finally develop theory-anchored models that can expand the state of the art in already-observed phenomena while pointing to never-before-realized and new functionality.

 

The goal of NLM is to integrate emerging phenomena with fundamental models that can describe and predict new functionality. These models will provide design tools and delineate the performance limits of new engineered light-matter interactions. Important applications to be addressed in the program include synthesizing new material structures for sources, non-reciprocal behavior, parametric phenomena, limiters, electromagnetic drives, and energy harvesting.

 

If we could have a space drive that did not use fuel then we could accelerate for decades using a nuclear power source. This would allow a spacecraft with a tiny amount of propulsion to accelerate to near light speed. DARPA has been funding the Nascent Light-Matter Interactions (NLM) project for about three years. This project is looking for functional variations of the super controversial EMDrive. EMDrive was first created twenty years ago and claimed that a conical copper device bounced magnetic radiation in the chamber to generate propulsion without using fuel. There are reports that the DARPA project was working with researchers in Spain who claim that forces of 0.1 newtons were generated. This needs to be confirmed. If confirmed then the system would be 5 times more powerful than the 0.02 newtons of some commercial ion drives.

 

The  new program should benefit existing programs, such as EXTREME, which focuses on specific uses for engineered materials. The goal of the EXTREME Program is to develop new optical components, devices, systems, architectures and design tools using Engineered Optical Materials (EnMats) to enable new functionality and/or vastly improve size, weight, and power characteristics of traditional optical systems.

 

DARPA says that the EXTREME project could introduce a new era in optics and imagers for national defense. EXTREME optical components would be lighter and smaller, enabling miniaturization of imaging systems for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) applications. The multifunctional nature of these devices could offer improvements in a wide variety of imaging systems by reducing size and weight without compromising performance for systems as diverse as night vision goggles, hyperspectral imagers, and IR search and track systems.

 

The DARPA NLM project is currently funded until May 2021. Mike McCulloch is the current DARPA EmDrive project leader. Mike presented some interim results in an embedded video below.