Optimized cloaks made of near-zero materials for different-sized concealed targets

The optimized cloaking design for conducting cylinders of different sizes is studied based on the Mie scattering theory. We construct a concentric multi-layered cloak made of alternating materials with isotropic dielectrics and epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) material, the thickness of which can be determined through genetic algorithm. As the radius of the conducting cylinder increases, high order scattering contributions are becoming evident, and more layers are needed. The scattering cross sections of three different radii of PEC cylinders are minimized by utilizing different numbers of multi-layers respectively. We find that eight or less optimized layers can cancel most of the scattering from a conducting cylinder with its dimension compared to wavelength, and more effectively when taking the ENZ material as the inner starting shell. The frequency dependence of total scattering is also studied, leading to the result that the bandwidth decreases as the size of concealed PEC cylinder increases. Furthermore, it is shown that the cloaking efficiency is less sensitive to the permittivity and thickness of the ENZ material, due to the small phase variation in the ENZ material. The multi-layered cloak designed for a PEC target can also be used to evidently reduce the scattering of a dielectric core and design a multi-layered elliptical cloak.