Negative permeability in magnetostatics and its experimental demonstration

© 2017 American Physical Society. The control of magnetic fields, essential for our science and technology, is currently achieved by magnetic materials with positive permeability, including ferromagnetic, paramagnetic, and diamagnetic types. Here we introduce materials with negative static permeability as a new paradigm for manipulating magnetic fields. As a first step, we extend the solutions of Maxwell magnetostatic equations to include negative-permeability values. The understanding of these new solutions allow us to devise a negative-permeability material as a suitably tailored set of currents arranged in space, overcoming the fact that passive materials with negative permeability do no exist in magnetostatics. We confirm the theory by experimentally creating a spherical shell that emulates a negative-permeability material in a uniform magnetic field. Our results open new possibilities for creating and manipulating magnetic fields, which can be useful for practical applications.