Controlling the emission and propagation of light with nano-plasmonic metamaterials and metasurfaces
Abstract
Metamaterials—artificially structured materials with engineered electromagnetic properties—have enabled unprecedented flexibility in manipulating electromagnetic waves and producing new functionalities. Metasurfaces are subwavelength thin metamaterial layers to introduce unusual properties do not exist in nature. They can play a fundamental role in generating synthetic scattering diagrams of macroscopic objects. Optical metamaterials and metasurfaces have enabled unprecedented flexibility in manipulating light waves and producing new functionalities. We have studied various topics in this field, from designs to potential applications. We experimentally demonstrated the world's first optical metasurface which is capable of precisely manipulating light in arbitrary ways over a broad range of near-infrared light, which could make possible of many optical innovations such as more powerful microscopes, telecommunications and computers. We proposed the first hyperbolic metasurface, which consist of a highly anisotropic material layer and an isotropic material layer can support Dyakonov surface waves that have hyperbolic dispersion. This type of metasurfaces support a broadband singularity in the photonic density of states, which opens up another possibility to engineer the spontaneous emission efficiency. We also developed a set of parallel simulation tools which can handle a variety of problems in nanophotonics and plasmonics. Especially, we established an on-line research environment for the research community with six tools, which deliver a cloud computing service with no demand for either any powerful computational hardware or any additional software installations and cover a range of tasks including the design and simulation of complex transformation optics devices and optical metamaterials.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Shalaev, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Electromagnetics|Optics|Materials science
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