Issue 5: New trends in nanophotonics (2020)

Optical wavefront shaping based on functional metasurfaces

Optical wavefront shaping based on functional metasurfaces

Regarded as a kind of smart surfaces, metasurfaces can arbitrarily tailor the amplitude, phase, and polarization of light. Metasurfaces usually consist of subwavelength nanoantenna or nanoresonator arrays, which are delicately designed and processed. As an …

Recent advances in optical metasurfaces for polarization detection and engineered polarization profiles

Recent advances in optical metasurfaces for polarization detection and engineered polarization profiles

Like amplitude, phase and frequency, polarization is one of the fundamental properties of light, which can be used to record, process and store information. Optical metasurfaces are ultrathin inhomogeneous media with planar nanostructures that can manipulate …

Broadband wavelength demultiplexer using Fano-resonant metasurface

Broadband wavelength demultiplexer using Fano-resonant metasurface

Fano resonance, one of the interesting resonance phenomena in physics, provides versatile applications when combined with a concept of metasurface in nanophotonics. Fano-resonant metasurface (FRM) is attracting a lot of attention due to its superior …

Direction control of colloidal quantum dot emission using dielectric metasurfaces

Direction control of colloidal quantum dot emission using dielectric metasurfaces

Owing to the recent developments of dielectric metasurfaces, their applications have been expanding from those pertaining to the thickness shrinkage of passive optical elements, such as lenses, polarizers, and quarter-wave plates, to applications pertaining …

Observation of an exceptional point in a non-Hermitian metasurface

Observation of an exceptional point in a non-Hermitian metasurface

Exceptional points (EPs), also known as non-Hermitian degeneracies, have been observed in parity-time symmetric metasurfaces as parity-time symmetry breaking points. However, the parity-time symmetry condition puts constraints on the metasurface parameter …

Deep learning enabled inverse design in nanophotonics

Deep learning enabled inverse design in nanophotonics

Deep learning has become the dominant approach in artificial intelligence to solve complex data-driven problems. Originally applied almost exclusively in computer-science areas such as image analysis and nature language processing, deep learning has rapidly …

Simulator-based training of generative neural networks for the inverse design of metasurfaces

Simulator-based training of generative neural networks for the inverse design of metasurfaces

Metasurfaces are subwavelength-structured artificial media that can shape and localize electromagnetic waves in unique ways. The inverse design of these devices is a non-convex optimization problem in a high dimensional space, making global optimization a …

Direct detection of charge and discharge process in supercapacitor by fiber-optic LSPR sensors

Direct detection of charge and discharge process in supercapacitor by fiber-optic LSPR sensors

Supercapacitors with high power density, ultralong lifespan and wide range operating temperature have drawn significant attention in recent years. However, monitoring the state of charge in supercapacitors in a cost-effective and flexible way is still …

Differentiating and quantifying exosome secretion from a single cell using quasi-bound states in the continuum

Differentiating and quantifying exosome secretion from a single cell using quasi-bound states in the continuum

One of the key challenges in biology is to understand how individual cells process information and respond to perturbations. However, most of the existing single-cell analysis methods can only provide a glimpse of cell properties at specific time points and …

Dispersion engineering and measurement of whispering gallery mode microresonator for Kerr frequency comb generation

Dispersion engineering and measurement of whispering gallery mode microresonator for Kerr frequency comb generation

Designing and engineering microresonator dispersion are essential for generating microresonator frequency comb. Microresonator frequency combs (microcombs, Kerr frequency combs) offer the potential for various attractive applications as a new type of coherent …

Plasmonic electro-optic modulator based on degenerate semiconductor interfaces

Plasmonic electro-optic modulator based on degenerate semiconductor interfaces

We present a semiconductor-based optoelectronic switch based on active modulation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) at lattice-matched indium gallium arsenide (In0.53Ga0.47As) degenerately doped pn++ junctions. The experimental device, which we refer to as …

Multipole and multimode engineering in Mie resonance-based metastructures

Multipole and multimode engineering in Mie resonance-based metastructures

Benefited from the well-known Mie resonance, a plethora of physical phenomena and applications are attracting attention in current research on dielectric-based nanophotonics. High-index dielectric metastructures are favorable to enhance light-matter …

3D and 4D printing for optics and metaphotonics

3D and 4D printing for optics and metaphotonics

Three-dimensional (3D) printing is a new paradigm in customized manufacturing and allows the fabrication of complex optical components and metaphotonic structures that are difficult to realize via traditional methods. Conventional lithography techniques are …

Photonic flat-band lattices and unconventional light localization

Photonic flat-band lattices and unconventional light localization

Flat-band systems have attracted considerable interest in different branches of physics in the past decades, providing a flexible platform for studying fundamental phenomena associated with completely dispersionless bands within the whole Brillouin zone. …

From symmetric to asymmetric bowtie nanoantennas: electrostatic conformal mapping perspective

From symmetric to asymmetric bowtie nanoantennas: electrostatic conformal mapping perspective

Plasmonic nanoantennas have revolutionized the way we study and modulate light–matter interaction. Due to nanofabrication limitations, dimer-type nanoantennas always exhibit some degree of asymmetry, which is desirable in some cases. For instance, in …

Tunable nanophotonics enabled by chalcogenide phase-change materials

Tunable nanophotonics enabled by chalcogenide phase-change materials

Nanophotonics has garnered intensive attention due to its unique capabilities in molding the flow of light in the subwavelength regime. Metasurfaces (MSs) and photonic integrated circuits (PICs) enable the realization of mass-producible, cost-effective, and …