Issue 14: Nanophotonics in support of Ukrainian Scientists (2023)

Asymmetric transmission in nanophotonics

Asymmetric transmission in nanophotonics

In a reciprocal medium, transmission of electromagnetic (EM) waves is symmetric along opposite directions which restrict design and implementation of various systems in optics and photonics. Asymmetric transmission (AT) is essential for designing isolators …

Integrated circuits based on broadband pixel-array metasurfaces for generating data-carrying optical and THz orbital angular momentum beams

Integrated circuits based on broadband pixel-array metasurfaces for generating data-carrying optical and THz orbital angular momentum beams

There is growing interest in using multiple multiplexed orthogonal orbital angular momentum (OAM) beams to increase the data capacity of communication systems in different frequency ranges. To help enable future deployment of OAM-based communications, an …

Singular optics empowered by engineered optical materials

Singular optics empowered by engineered optical materials

The rapid development of optical technologies, such as optical manipulation, data processing, sensing, microscopy, and communications, necessitates new degrees of freedom to sculpt optical beams in space and time beyond conventionally used spatially …

Electrochemical photonics: a pathway towards electrovariable optical metamaterials

Electrochemical photonics: a pathway towards electrovariable optical metamaterials

This review article focuses on the latest achievements in the creation of a class of electrotuneable optical metamaterials for switchable mirrors/windows, variable colour mirrors, optical filters, and SERS sensors, based on the voltage-controlled …

Sustainable chemistry with plasmonic photocatalysts

Sustainable chemistry with plasmonic photocatalysts

There is a pressing global need to increase the use of renewable energy sources and limit greenhouse gas emissions. Towards this goal, highly efficient and molecularly selective chemical processes that operate under mild conditions are critical. Plasmonic …

Ukraine and singular optics

Ukraine and singular optics

The mostly theoretical viewpoint, in which light is understood in terms of its singularities – caustics, phase vortices and lines of circular and linear polarisation – was developed in Bristol in the 1970s and 1980s. Starting in the 1990s, research by …

Machine learning to optimize additive manufacturing for visible photonics

Machine learning to optimize additive manufacturing for visible photonics

Additive manufacturing has become an important tool for fabricating advanced systems and devices for visible nanophotonics. However, the lack of simulation and optimization methods taking into account the essential physics of the optimization process leads to …

Through thick and thin: how optical cavities control spin

Through thick and thin: how optical cavities control spin

When light interacts with matter by means of scattering and absorption, we observe the resulting color. Light also probes the symmetry of matter and the result is encoded in its polarization. In the special case of circularly-polarized light, which is …

Spin–orbit coupling induced by ascorbic acid crystals

Spin–orbit coupling induced by ascorbic acid crystals

Some anisotropic materials form semicrystalline structures, called spherulites, when observed in a polarisation microscope, exhibit a characteristic “maltese-cross”-like pattern. While this observation has been hitherto considered as a tool to …

Broadband transfer of binary images via optically long wire media

Broadband transfer of binary images via optically long wire media

In the paper the binary mechanism of the long-distance image transfer in a wire-medium (WM) endoscope is suggested and studied. We have shown that a discrete image formed by a set of point sources TM-polarized with respect to the WM can be transferred from …

Counting and mapping of subwavelength nanoparticles from a single shot scattering pattern

Counting and mapping of subwavelength nanoparticles from a single shot scattering pattern

Particle counting is of critical importance for nanotechnology, environmental monitoring, pharmaceutical, food and semiconductor industries. Here we introduce a super-resolution single-shot optical method for counting and mapping positions of subwavelength …

Controlling surface waves with temporal discontinuities of metasurfaces

Controlling surface waves with temporal discontinuities of metasurfaces

Static reactive metasurfaces allow excitation and propagation of surface waves. In this paper, we theoretically elucidate how surface-wave propagation along a reactive boundary is affected by temporal discontinuities of effective parameters characterizing the …

On the relation between electrical and electro-optical properties of tunnelling injection quantum dot lasers

On the relation between electrical and electro-optical properties of tunnelling injection quantum dot lasers

We present a comprehensive study of the temperature dependent electronic and optoelectronic properties of a tunnelling injection quantum dot laser. The optical power-voltage (P_opt–V) characteristics are shown to be correlated with the current-voltage …

On-chip multivariant COVID 19 photonic sensor based on silicon nitride double-microring resonators

On-chip multivariant COVID 19 photonic sensor based on silicon nitride double-microring resonators

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a newly emerging human infectious disease that continues to develop new variants. A crucial step in the quest to reduce the infection is the development of rapid and reliable virus detectors. Here, we report a chip scale …

Nano-infrared imaging of metal insulator transition in few-layer 1T-TaS_2

Nano-infrared imaging of metal insulator transition in few-layer 1T-TaS_2

Among the family of transition metal dichalcogenides, 1T-TaS_2 stands out for several peculiar physical properties including a rich charge density wave phase diagram, quantum spin liquid candidacy and low temperature Mott insulator phase. As 1T-TaS_2 is …

Electrical generation of surface phonon polaritons

Electrical generation of surface phonon polaritons

Efficient electrical generation of mid-infrared light is challenging because of the dearth of materials with natural dipole-active electronic transitions in this spectral region. One approach to solve this problem is through quantum-engineering of the …

Dynamic beam control based on electrically switchable nanogratings from conducting polymers

Dynamic beam control based on electrically switchable nanogratings from conducting polymers

Surging interests in point-of-device miniaturization have led to the development of metasurface-based optical components. Here, we demonstrate an electrically-driven ultracompact beam controller in the infrared spectral range. The effect benefits from …

Tilting light’s polarization plane to spatially separate the ultrafast nonlinear response of chiral molecules

Tilting light’s polarization plane to spatially separate the ultrafast nonlinear response of chiral molecules

Distinguishing between the left- and right-handed versions of a chiral molecule (enantiomers) is vital, but also inherently difficult. Traditional optical methods using elliptically/circularly polarized light rely on linear effects which arise beyond the …

Spin-dependent phenomena at chiral temporal interfaces

Spin-dependent phenomena at chiral temporal interfaces

Temporally varying electromagnetic media have been extensively investigated recently to unveil new means for controlling light. However, spin-dependent phenomena in such media have not been explored thoroughly. Here, we reveal the existence of spin-dependent …

Spin-controlled photonics via temporal anisotropy

Spin-controlled photonics via temporal anisotropy

Temporal metamaterials, based on time-varying constitutive properties, offer new exciting possibilities for advanced field manipulations. In this study, we explore the capabilities of anisotropic temporal slabs, which rely on abrupt changes in time from …

Coherent control of symmetry breaking in transverse-field Ising chains using few-cycle pulses

Coherent control of symmetry breaking in transverse-field Ising chains using few-cycle pulses

Coherent control of quantum systems with phase-stable pulses offers enticing new opportunities for lightwave electronics. Here we extend this approach to many-body systems with spin degrees of freedom, demonstrating that a single few-cycle control pulse can …

Field enhancement of epsilon-near-zero modes in realistic ultrathin absorbing films

Field enhancement of epsilon-near-zero modes in realistic ultrathin absorbing films

Using electrodynamical description of the average power absorbed by a conducting film, we present an expression for the electric-field intensity enhancement (FIE) due to epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) polariton modes. We show that FIE reaches a limit in ultrathin …

Controlled compression, amplification and frequency up-conversion of optical pulses by media with time-dependent refractive index

Controlled compression, amplification and frequency up-conversion of optical pulses by media with time-dependent refractive index

Control over the time dependence of the refractive index of a material allows one to modify and manipulate the properties of light propagating through it. While metamaterials provide a promising avenue in this context, another route has been extensively …

Tailored thermal emission in bulk calcite through optic axis reorientation

Tailored thermal emission in bulk calcite through optic axis reorientation

The polar nature of calcite results in lattice vibrations that can be stimulated through gratings and nanostructures to design spatially and spectrally coherent thermal radiation patterns. In order to obtain optimal design control over such patterned …

Tip-enhanced photoluminescence of monolayer MoS_2 increased and spectrally shifted by injection of electrons

Tip-enhanced photoluminescence of monolayer MoS_2 increased and spectrally shifted by injection of electrons

Using tip-enhanced photoluminescence (TEPL), we investigate micron-size monolayer MoS2 flakes. In a sequence of studies, we apply various voltages between the Ag-coated nano-tip and the MoS_2 flakes and observe an intriguing result. During the TEPL …

Quantum-enhanced interferometer using Kerr squeezing

Quantum-enhanced interferometer using Kerr squeezing

One of the prime applications of squeezed light is enhancing the sensitivity of an interferometer below the quantum shot-noise limit, but so far, no such experimental demonstration was reported when using the optical Kerr effect. In prior setups involving …

Nonlocal electro-optic metasurfaces for free-space light modulation

Nonlocal electro-optic metasurfaces for free-space light modulation

Dynamic optical metasurfaces with ultrafast temporal response, i.e., spatiotemporal optical metasurfaces, provide attractive solutions and open fascinating perspectives for modern highly integrated optics and photonics. In this work, electro-optically …

Dispersion braiding and band knots in plasmonic arrays with broken symmetries

Dispersion braiding and band knots in plasmonic arrays with broken symmetries

Periodic arrays can support highly nontrivial modal dispersion, stemming from the interplay between localized resonances of the array elements and distributed resonances supported by the lattice. Recently, intentional defects in the periodicity, i.e., broken …

Dual-mode hyperbolicity, supercanalization, and leakage in self-complementary metasurfaces

Dual-mode hyperbolicity, supercanalization, and leakage in self-complementary metasurfaces

Anisotropic Self-Complementary Metasurfaces (SC-MTSs) are structures constituted by an alternation of complementary inductive and capacitive strips, which are “self-dual” according to Babinet’s duality principle. They support the propagation of two …

Monocular depth sensing using metalens

Monocular depth sensing using metalens

3-D depth sensing is essential for many applications ranging from consumer electronics to robotics. Passive depth sensing techniques based on a double-helix (DH) point-spread-function (PSF) feature high depth estimation precision, minimal power consumption, …

Multimode hybrid gold-silicon nanoantennas for tailored nanoscale optical confinement

Multimode hybrid gold-silicon nanoantennas for tailored nanoscale optical confinement

High-index dielectric nanoantennas, which provide an interplay between electric and magnetic modes, have been widely used as building blocks for a variety of devices and metasurfaces, both in linear and nonlinear regimes. Here, we investigate hybrid …

Replicating physical motion with Minkowskian isorefractive spacetime crystals

Replicating physical motion with Minkowskian isorefractive spacetime crystals

Here, we show that isorefractive spacetime crystals with a travelling-wave modulation may mimic rigorously the response of moving material systems. Unlike generic spacetime crystals, which are characterized by a bi-anisotropic coupling in the co-moving frame, …

Reconfigurable nonlinear optical element using tunable couplers and inverse-designed structure

Reconfigurable nonlinear optical element using tunable couplers and inverse-designed structure

In recent years, wave-based analog computing has been at the center of attention for providing ultra-fast and power-efficient signal processing enabled by wave propagation through artificially engineered structures. Building on these structures, various …