Issue 21 (2024)

Flat band fine-tuning and its photonic applications

Flat band fine-tuning and its photonic applications

Flat bands – single-particle energy bands – in tight-binding lattices, aka networks, have attracted attention due to the presence of macroscopic degeneracies and their sensitivity to perturbations. They support compact localized eigenstates protected by …

Clearing a path for light through non-Hermitian media

Clearing a path for light through non-Hermitian media

The performance of all active photonic devices today is greatly limited by loss. Here, we show that one can engineer a low loss path in a metal-clad lossy multi-mode waveguide while simultaneously achieving high-performance active photonic devices. We …

Substrate-induced hybridization of plasmon modes in the composite nanostructure of nanodisk array/thin film for spectrum modulation

Substrate-induced hybridization of plasmon modes in the composite nanostructure of nanodisk array/thin film for spectrum modulation

Hybridization coupling among plasmon modes is an effective approach to manipulate near-field properties thus optical spectral shapes of plasmonic nanostructures. Generally, mode hybridization coupling is achieved by modifying the topography and dimensions of …

Integrating deep convolutional surrogate solvers and particle swarm optimization for efficient inverse design of plasmonic patch nanoantennas

Integrating deep convolutional surrogate solvers and particle swarm optimization for efficient inverse design of plasmonic patch nanoantennas

Plasmonic nanoantennas with suitable far-field characteristics are of huge interest for utilization in optical wireless links, inter-/intrachip communications, LiDARs, and photonic integrated circuits due to their exceptional modal confinement. Despite its …

Fast and low energy-consumption integrated Fourier-transform spectrometer based on thin-film lithium niobate

Fast and low energy-consumption integrated Fourier-transform spectrometer based on thin-film lithium niobate

Integrated miniature spectrometers have impacts in industry, agriculture, and aerospace applications due to their unique advantages in portability and energy consumption. Although existing on-chip spectrometers have achieved breakthroughs in key performance …

Surface plasmon polariton–enhanced upconversion luminescence for biosensing applications

Surface plasmon polariton–enhanced upconversion luminescence for biosensing applications

Upconversion luminescence (UCL) has great potential for highly sensitive biosensing due to its unique wavelength shift properties. The main limitation of UCL is its low quantum efficiency, which is typically compensated using low-noise detectors and …

Asymmetric dumbbell dimers simultaneously supporting quasi-bound states in continuum and anapole modes for terahertz biosensing

Asymmetric dumbbell dimers simultaneously supporting quasi-bound states in continuum and anapole modes for terahertz biosensing

Multi-resonant metasurfaces are of great significance in the applications of multi-band nanophotonics. Here, we propose a novel metasurface design scheme for simultaneously supporting quasi-bound states in continuum (QBIC) and other resonant modes, in which …

Four-channel graphene optical receiver

Four-channel graphene optical receiver

Silicon photonics with the advantages of low power consumption and low fabrication cost is a crucial technology for facilitating high-capacity optical communications and interconnects. The graphene photodetectors (GPDs) featuring broadband operation, high …

Enhanced vertical second harmonic generation from layered GaSe coupled to photonic crystal circular Bragg resonators

Enhanced vertical second harmonic generation from layered GaSe coupled to photonic crystal circular Bragg resonators

Two-dimensional (2D) layered materials without centrosymmetry, such as GaSe, have emerged as promising novel optical materials due to large second-order nonlinear susceptibilities. However, their nonlinear responses are severely limited by the short …

Broadband mode exchanger based on subwavelength Y-junctions

Broadband mode exchanger based on subwavelength Y-junctions

Multimode silicon photonics, leveraging mode-division multiplexing technologies, offers significant potential to increase capacity of large-scale multiprocessing systems for on-chip optical interconnects. These technologies have implications not only for …

Two-dimensional flat-band solitons in superhoneycomb lattices

Two-dimensional flat-band solitons in superhoneycomb lattices

Flat-band periodic materials are characterized by a linear spectrum containing at least one band where the propagation constant remains nearly constant irrespective of the Bloch momentum across the Brillouin zone. These materials provide a unique platform for …

Dual-control of incubation effect for efficiently fabricating surface structures in fused silica

Dual-control of incubation effect for efficiently fabricating surface structures in fused silica

Fused silica with surface structures has potential applications in microfluidic, aerospace and other fields. To fabricate structures with high dimensional accuracy and surface quality is of paramount importance. However, it is indeed a challenge to strike a …

Ultrathin Ge-YF_3 antireflective coating with 0.5% reflectivity on high-index substrate for long-wavelength infrared cameras

Ultrathin Ge-YF_3 antireflective coating with 0.5% reflectivity on high-index substrate for long-wavelength infrared cameras

Achieving long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) cameras with high sensitivity and shorter exposure times faces challenges due to series reflections from high-refractive index lenses within compact optical systems. However, designing effective antireflective …