Switchable invisibility cloak, anticloak, transparent cloak, superscatterer, and illusion for the Laplace equation

For ideal invisibility cloaks, electromagnetic radiations cannot penetrate through the cloaking shell. However, researchers have suggested that the originally hidden object with a cloaking shell is visible to the outside world when it is covered by an "anticloak." In this paper, we give the first experimental verification of the "anticloak" for the Laplace equation, which requires negative conductivity profiles. The proposed device consists of two layers-the cloak and anticloak, which can work individually or collectively and give rise to different functions. Functionality switching among the invisibility cloak, anticloak, transparent cloak, superscatterer, and illusion is suggested and demonstrated. Based on the circuit theory, we fabricate a switching resistor network with both positive and negative resistors to emulate the cloaking and anticloaking interactions. The switchable cloaking, anticloaking, transparent, superscatterer, and illusion performances are confirmed by the experiments and/ or numerical simulations.