Issue 14: Honorary Issue for Mark Stockman (2021)

Plasmons compressing the light – a jewel in the treasure chest of Mark Stockman’s legacy

Plasmons compressing the light – a jewel in the treasure chest of Mark Stockman’s legacy

Among all the contributions made by Mark Stockman, his work on concentrating the light energy to unprecedented densities is one of the most remarkable achievements. Here it is briefly reviewed and a relatively novel, intuitive, and physically transparent …

Novel non-plasmonic nanolasers empowered by topology and interference effects

Novel non-plasmonic nanolasers empowered by topology and interference effects

Historically, nanophotonics deals with a control of light at the nanoscale being closely connected with the rapid advances in plasmonics – the physics of surface plasmon polaritons supported by metal–dielectric interfaces. Properly engineered …

Nanofocusing: reaching out

Nanofocusing: reaching out

Nanofocusing, the term coined by Mark Stockman, has been observed in many different tapered waveguide configurations, demonstrating the possibility for optical modes to be efficiently delivered to and concentrated into nanoscale regions far beyond the …

Plasmonic nanolasers: fundamental properties and applications

Plasmonic nanolasers: fundamental properties and applications

Plasmonic nanolasers are a new class of coherent emitters where surface plasmons are amplified by stimulated emission in a plasmonic nanocavity. In contrast to lasers, the physical size and mode volume of plasmonic nanolasers can shrink beyond the optical …

Space- and time-resolved second harmonic spectroscopy of coupled plasmonic nanocavities

Space- and time-resolved second harmonic spectroscopy of coupled plasmonic nanocavities

Localized surface plasmon resonances of individual sub-wavelength cavities milled in metallic films can couple to each other to form a collective behavior. This coupling leads to a delocalization of the plasmon field at the film surface and drastically alters …

Surface-response functions obtained from equilibrium electron-density profiles

Surface-response functions obtained from equilibrium electron-density profiles

Surface-response functions are one of the most promising routes for bridging the gap between fully quantum-mechanical calculations and phenomenological models in quantum nanoplasmonics. Among all currently available recipes for obtaining such response …

Effect of nanoscale dielectric environments on concentration quenching

Effect of nanoscale dielectric environments on concentration quenching

We have studied the dependence of concentration quenching of luminescence (donor–acceptor energy transfer) on the thickness d of dye-doped polymeric films (HITC:PMMA) and found its strong inhibition at small values of d. This phenomenon is tentatively …

Optical spin–orbit coupling in the presence of magnetization: photonic skyrmion interaction with magnetic domains

Optical spin–orbit coupling in the presence of magnetization: photonic skyrmion interaction with magnetic domains

Polarization and related spin properties are important characteristics of electromagnetic waves and their manipulation is crucial in almost all photonic applications. Magnetic materials are often used for controlling light polarization through the …

Anomalous ultrafast all-optical Hall effect in gapped graphene

Anomalous ultrafast all-optical Hall effect in gapped graphene

We propose an ultrafast all-optical anomalous Hall effect in two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors of hexagonal symmetry such as gapped graphene (GG), transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). To induce such an effect, the …

Exploiting space-time duality in the synthesis of impedance transformers via temporal metamaterials

Exploiting space-time duality in the synthesis of impedance transformers via temporal metamaterials

Multisection quarter-wave impedance transformers are widely applied in microwave engineering and optics to attain impedance-matching networks and antireflection coatings. These structures are mostly designed in the spatial domain (time harmonic) by using …

Optical current generation in graphene: CEP control vs. ω + 2ω control

Optical current generation in graphene: CEP control vs. ω + 2ω control

The injection of directional currents in solids with strong optical fields has attracted tremendous attention as a route to realize ultrafast electronics based on the quantum-mechanical nature of electrons at femto- to attosecond timescales. Such currents are …

Edge detection with meta-lens: from one dimension to three dimensions

Edge detection with meta-lens: from one dimension to three dimensions

Meta-lens has successfully been developed for a variety of optical functions. We demonstrate a light-field edge detection imaging system with a gallium nitride achromatic meta-lens array. It enables edge detection from one dimension to three dimensions. The …

Coherent control at gold needle tips approaching the strong-field regime

Coherent control at gold needle tips approaching the strong-field regime

We demonstrate coherent control in photoemission from a gold needle tip using an omega – 2 omega field composed of strong few-cycle laser pulses with a nearfield intensity of ?4 TW/cm2. We obtain the nearfield intensity from electron energy spectra, showing …

Tailoring exceptional points in a hybrid PT-symmetric and anti-PT-symmetric scattering system

Tailoring exceptional points in a hybrid PT-symmetric and anti-PT-symmetric scattering system

Fano resonances feature an asymmetric lineshape with controllable linewidth, stemming from the interplay between bright and dark resonances. They provide efficient opportunities to shape the scattering lineshape, but they usually lack flexibility and …

Transition to strong coupling regime in hybrid plasmonic systems: exciton-induced transparency and Fano interference

Transition to strong coupling regime in hybrid plasmonic systems: exciton-induced transparency and Fano interference

We present a microscopic model describing the transition to a strong coupling regime for an emitter resonantly coupled to a surface plasmon in a metal–dielectric structure. We demonstrate that the shape of scattering spectra is determined by an interplay of …

Single-nanoantenna driven nanoscale control of the VO2 insulator to metal transition

Single-nanoantenna driven nanoscale control of the VO2 insulator to metal transition

The ultrafast concentration of electromagnetic energy in nanoscale volumes is one of the key features of optical nanoantennas illuminated at their surface plasmon resonances. Here, we drive the insulator to metal phase transition in vanadium dioxide (VO2) …

High laser induced damage threshold photoresists for nano-imprint and 3D multi-photon lithography

High laser induced damage threshold photoresists for nano-imprint and 3D multi-photon lithography

Optics manufacturing technology is predicted to play a major role in the future production of integrated photonic circuits. One of the major drawbacks in the realization of photonic circuits is the damage of optical materials by intense laser pulses. Here, we …

Onset of charge interaction in strong-field photoemission from nanometric needle tips

Onset of charge interaction in strong-field photoemission from nanometric needle tips

Strong-field photoemission from nanostructures and the associated temporally modulated currents play a key role in the development of ultrafast vacuum optoelectronics. Optical light fields could push their operation bandwidth into the petahertz domain. A …

Massive surface-plasmon polaritons

Massive surface-plasmon polaritons

It is well-known that a quantum of light (photon) has a zero mass in vacuum. Entering into a medium the photon creates a quasiparticle (polariton, plasmon, surface-phonon, surface-plasmon polariton, etc.) whose rest mass is generally not zero. In this letter, …

VCSEL with multi-transverse cavities with bandwidth beyond 100 GHz

VCSEL with multi-transverse cavities with bandwidth beyond 100 GHz

To fulfill the demands of high-speed photonic applications, researchers, and engineers have been working to improve the modulation bandwidth (MBW) of semiconductor lasers. We extend our prior work on modeling a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) …