No Arabic abstract
Directional excitation of guidance modes is central to many applications ranging from light harvesting, optical information processing to quantum optical technology. Of paramount interest, especially, the active control of near-field directionality provides a new paradigm for the real-time on-chip manipulation of light. Here we find that for a given dipolar source, its near-field directionality can be toggled efficiently via tailoring the polarization of surface waves that are excited, for example, via tuning the chemical potential of graphene in a graphene-metasurface waveguide. This finding enables a feasible scheme for the active near-field directionality. Counterintuitively, we reveal that this scheme can transform a circular electric/magnetic dipole into a Huygens dipole in the near-field coupling. Moreover, for Janus dipoles, this scheme enables us to actively flip their near-field coupling and non-coupling faces.
In this work, a momentum-space geometrical structure in helical evanescent electromagnetic waves is revealed. It is shown that for every helical evanescent wave on a helicity-dependent half tangent line in momentum space, the orientation of each of its field, spin, and Poynting vectors is the same. This geometric structure reveals itself as a remarkable relation between the far-field and near-field components of the angular spectrum. Any general evanescent wavevector is linked to two points on the $k_{rho}=k_0$ circle of propagating wavevectors via two helicity-dependent tangent lines. Knowing the field on the $k_{rho}=k_0$ circle of a general dipolar source is sufficient to determine its entire evanescent angular spectrum. Applying this concept, we gain insights into near-field directionality by showing that every zero in the angular spectrum is a helicity singularity where two half-tangent lines of opposite helicity intersect. A powerful method for synthetic design of near-field directional sources is also devised, using structured helical illumination to gain full control of the near-field directionality. The results provide a fundamental insight of helical evanescent waves and have implications in areas where chiral light-matter interaction plays a central role.
Near-field radiative heat transfer (RHT) between two bodies can significantly exceed the far-field limit set by Plancks law due to the evanescent wave tunneling, which typically can only occur when the two bodies are separated at subwavelength distances. We show that the RHT between two SiC nanoparticles with separation distances much larger than the thermal wavelength can still exceed the far-field limit when the particles are located within a subwavelength distance away from a SiC substrate. In this configuration, the localized surface phonon polariton (SPhP) of the particles couples to the propagating SPhP of the substrate which then provides a new channel for the near-field energy transport and enhances the RHT by orders of magnitude at large distances. The enhancement is also demonstrated to appear in a chain of closely spaced SiC nanoparticles located in the near field of a SiC substrate. The findings provide a new way for the long-distance transport of near-field energy.
We demonstrate lasing mode selection in nearly circular semiconductor microdisks by shaping the spatial profile of optical pump. Despite of strong mode overlap, adaptive pumping suppresses all lasing modes except the targeted one. Due to slight deformation of the cavity shape and boundary roughness, each lasing mode has distinct emission pattern. By selecting different mode to be the dominant lasing mode, we can switch both the lasing frequency and the output direction. Such tunability by external pump after the laser is fabricated enhances the functionality of semiconductor microcavity lasers.
We present a systematic comparison between guided modes supported by slab waveguides and Bloch Surface Waves (BSWs) propagating at the surface of truncated periodic multilayers. We show that, contrary to common belief, the best surface field enhancement achievable for guided modes in a slab waveguide is comparable to that observed for BSWs. At the same time, we demonstrate that, if one is interested in maximizing the electromagnetic energy density at a generic point of a dielectric planar structure, BSWs are often preferable to modes in which light is confined uniquely by total internal reflection. Since these results are wavelength independent and have been obtained by considering a very wide range of refractive indices of the structure constituent materials, we believe they can prove helpful in the design of future structures for the control and the enhancement of the light-matter interaction.
Far-field directional scattering and near-field directional coupling from simple sources have recently received great attention in photonics: beyond circularly-polarized dipoles, whose directional coupling to evanescent waves was recently applied to acoustics, the near-field directionality of modes in optics includes phased combinations of electric and magnetic dipoles, such as the Janus dipole and the Huygens dipole, both of which have been experimentally implemented using high refractive index nanoparticles. In this work we extend this to acoustics: we propose the use of high acoustic index scatterers exhibiting phased combinations of acoustic monopoles and dipoles with far-field and near-field directionality. All solutions stem from the elegant acoustic angular spectrum of the acoustic source, in close analogy to electromagnetism. A Huygens acoustic source with zero backward scattering is proposed and numerically demonstrated, as well as a Janus source achieving face-selective and position-dependent evanescent coupling to nearby acoustic waveguides.