Light reflects as a vortex off a metamaterial with unusual optical properties

Metamaterials made of magnetic photonic crystals have been generated and tuned to a theoretically predicted transition point at which peculiar optical properties emerge. For example, when light is shone on a slab of the material, some of it is reflected back as a spatio-temporal vortex. Strange light-scattering behaviours emerge from magnetic photonic crystals tuned to a specific transition point.