Möbius symmetry, the topological phenomenon that yields a half-twisted strip with two surfaces but only one side, has been a source of fascination since its discovery in 1858 by German mathematician August Möbius. As artist M.C. Escher so vividly demonstrated in his “parade of ants,” it is possible to traverse the “inside” and “outside” surfaces of a Möbius strip without crossing over an edge. For years, scientists have been searching for an example of Möbius symmetry in natural materials without any success. Now a team of scientists has discovered Möbius symmetry in metamaterials — materials engineered from artificial “atoms” and “molecules” with electromagnetic properties that arise from their structure rather than their chemical composition.
Xiang Zhang, a scientist with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and a professor at the University of California (UC) Berkeley, led a study in which electromagnetic Möbius symmetry was successfully introduced into composite metamolecular systems made from metals and dielectrics. This discovery opens the door to finding and exploiting novel phenomena in metamaterials.
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