No Arabic abstract
Hyperbolic metamaterials are materials in which at least one principal dielectric constant is negative. We describe the refractive index surface, and the resulting refraction effects, for a biaxial hyperbolic metamaterial, with principal dielectric constants $epsilon_1<0$, $0<epsilon_2 eqepsilon_3$. In this general case the two sheets of the index surface intersect forming conical singularities. We derive the ray description of conical refraction in these materials, and show that it is topologically and quantitatively distinct from conical refraction in a conventional biaxial material. We also develop a wave optics description, which allows us to obtain the diffraction patterns formed from arbitrary beams incident close to the optic axis. The resulting patterns lack circular symmetry, and hence are qualitatively different from those obtained in conventional, positive index materials.
Hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs) are highly anisotropic optical materials that behave as metals or as dielectrics depending on the direction of propagation of light. They are becoming essential for a plethora of applications, ranging from aerospace to automotive, from wireless to medical and IoT. These applications often work in harsh environments or may sustain remarkable external stresses. This calls for materials that show enhanced optical properties as well as tailorable mechanical properties. Depending on their specific use, both hard and ultrasoft materials could be required, although the combination with optical hyperbolic response is rarely addressed. Here, we demonstrate the possibility to combine optical hyperbolicity and tunable mechanical properties in the same (meta)material, focusing on the case of extreme mechanical hardness. Using high-throughput calculations from first principles and effective medium theory, we explored a large class of layered materials with hyperbolic optical activity in the near-IR and visible range, and we identified a reduced number of ultrasoft and hard HMMs among more than 1800 combinations of transition metal rocksalt crystals. Once validated by the experiments, this new class of metamaterials may foster previously unexplored optical/mechanical applications.
Hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs) support propagating waves with arbitrarily large wavevectors over broad spectral ranges, and are uniquely valuable for engineering radiative thermal transport in the near field. Here, by employing a rational design approach based on the electromagnetic local density of states, we demonstrate the ability of HMMs to substantially rectify radiative heat flow. Our idea is to establish a forward-biased scenario where the two HMM-based terminals of a thermal diode feature overlapped hyperbolic bands which result in a large heat current, and suppress the reverse heat flow by creating spectrally mismatched density of states as the temperature bias is flipped. As an example, we present a few high-performance thermal diodes by pairing HMMs made of polar dielectrics and metal-to-insulator transition (MIT) materials in the form of periodic nanowire arrays, and considering three representative kinds of substrates. Upon optimization, we theoretically achieve a rectification ratio of 324 at a 100 nm gap, which remains greater than 148 for larger gap sizes up to 1 um over a wide temperature range. The maximum rectification represents an almost 1000-fold increase compared to a bulk diode using the same materials, and is twice that of state-of-the-art designs. Our work highlights the potential of HMMs for rectifying radiative heat flow, and may find applications in advanced thermal management and energy conversion systems.
Semiconductor-based layered hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs) house high-wavevector volume plasmon polariton (VPP) modes in the infrared spectral range. VPP modes have successfully been exploited in the weak-coupling regime through the enhanced Purcell effect. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate strong coupling between the VPP modes in a semiconductor HMM and the intersubband transition of epitaxially-embedded quantum wells. We observe clear anticrossings in the dispersion curves for the zeroth-, first-, second-, and third-order VPP modes, resulting in upper and lower polariton branches for each mode. This demonstration sets the stage for the creation of novel infrared optoelectronic structures combining HMMs with embedded epitaxial emitter or detector structures.
We propose an approach to enhance and direct the spontaneous emission from isolated emitters embedded inside hyperbolic metamaterials into single photon beams. The approach rests on collective plasmonic Bloch modes of hyperbolic metamaterials which propagate in highly directional beams called quantum resonance cones. We propose a pumping scheme using the transparency window of the hyperbolic metamaterial that occurs near the topological transition. Finally, we address the challenge of outcoupling these broadband resonance cones into vacuum using a dielectric bullseye grating. We give a detailed analysis of quenching and design the metamaterial to have a huge Purcell factor in a broad bandwidth inspite of the losses in the metal. Our work should help motivate experiments in the development of single photon sources for broadband emitters such as nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond.
Hyperbolic Metamaterials (HMMs) have recently garnered much attention because they possess the ability for broadband manipulation of the photon density of states and sub-wavelength light confinement. However, a major difficulty arises with the coupling of light out of HMMs due to strong confinement of the electromagnetic field in states with high momentum called high-k modes which become evanescent outside the structure. Here we report the first demonstration of directional out-coupling of light from high-k modes in an active HMM using a high index bulls-eye grating. Quantum dots (QDs) embedded underneath the metamaterial show highly directional emission through the propagation and out-coupling of resonance cones which are a unique feature of hyperbolic media. This demonstration of efficient out-coupling of light from active HMMs could pave the way for developing practical photonic devices using these systems.