No Arabic abstract
The optical properties of some nanomaterials can be controlled by an external magnetic field, providing active functionalities for a wide range of applications, from single-molecule sensing to nanoscale nonreciprocal optical isolation. Materials with broadband tunable magneto-optical response are therefore highly desired for various components in next-generation integrated photonic nanodevices. Concurrently, hyperbolic metamaterials received a lot of attention in the past decade since they exhibit unusual properties that are rarely observed in nature and provide an ideal platform to control the optical response at the nanoscale via careful design of the effective permittivity tensor, surpassing the possibilities of conventional systems. Here, we experimentally study magnetic circular dichroism in a metasurface made of type-II hyperbolic nanoparticles on a transparent substrate. Numerical simulations confirm the experimental findings, and an analytical model is established to explain the physical origin of the observed magneto-optical effects, which can be described in terms of the coupling of fundamental electric and magnetic dipole modes with an external magnetic field. Our system paves the way for the development of nanophotonic active devices combining the benefits of sub-wavelength light manipulation in hyperbolic metamaterials supporting a large density of optical states with the ability to freely tune the magneto-optical response via control over the anisotropic permittivity of the system.
In the close vicinity of a chiral nanostructure, the circular dichroism of a biomolecule could be greatly enhanced, due to the interaction with the local superchiral fields. Modest enhancement of optical activity using a planar metamaterial, with some chiral properties, and achiral nanoparticles has been previously reported. A more substantial chirality enhancement can be achieved in the local filed of a chiral nanostructure with a three-dimensional arrangement. Using an embossed chiral nanostructure designed for chiroptical sensing, we measure the circular dichroism spectra of two biomolecules, Chlorophylls A and B, at the molecular level, using a simple polarization resolved reflection measurement. This experiment is the first realization of the on-resonance surface-enhanced circular dichroism, achieved by matching the chiral resonances of a strongly chiral metamaterial with that of a chiral molecule, resulting in an unprecedentedly large differential CD spectrum from a monolayer of a chiral material.
In this paper we reveal the physics behind the formation of tri- and tetra-hyperbolic phases in anisotropic metamaterials without magnetoelectric coupling and describe the anti-crossing splitting phenomenon in the hyperbolic dispersion which arises due to the hybridization of the plasmonic and magnetic Bloch high-k polaritons. This considerably deepens the understanding of the high-k polaritons and the topology of the optical iso-frequency surfaces in k-space and will find applications in optical nano-resolution imaging and emission rate and directivity control. To accomplish this, we develop a range of new techniques of theoretical optics for bianisotropic materials, including the quadratic index of refraction operator method, suitable to study the high-k polaritons with finite indices of refraction and the explicit expression for the characteristic matrix in generic bianisotropic media. We introduce the spatial stratification approach for the electric and magnetic responses of anisotropic homogeneous media to analyze the underlying Bloch waves. We believe that the formalisms developed here can be useful for the researchers in the field of theoretical optics of anisotropic and bianisotropic media in the future.
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.
Over the past decade, topology has garnered great attention in a wide area of physics. In particular, it has exerted influence on photonics because carefully engineered photonic crystals and metamaterials can help explore the non-trivial state of materials. In this regard, all dielectric metamaterials with large anisotropy, and dipole and multipole Mie resonators have played an increasingly important role in topological photonics. Advantages of Mie resonators make it possible to quest for non-trivial states in three dimensions and theoretical calculation supports its potential. However, it is very difficult to demonstrate this experimentally because it is hard to make the metacrystal by anisotropic meta-atoms despite much effort. Here we report a Dirac metamaterial for 3D topological photonics. It is implemented by a metacrystal self-assembled by a molecule, HYLION-12 which has both anisotropic polarizability and ring current. As its peculiar properties, it has an exotic optical constant that can be used for the electric and magnetic hyperbolic metamaterial, and the double hyperbolic metamaterial in the ultraviolet region. It also showed 142% of reflectance at 242nm as an amplified reflector and asymmetric transmittance up to 30% through the opaque substrate as a Huygens source under 300nm. Furthermore, it demonstrated various phenomena of topological photonics such as Pancharatnam-Berry and waveguide phase merging, wavefront shaping and waveguide on edges as a 3D topological photonic material. The new strategy using polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is expected to be an effective way to realize 3D topological photonics.
Nonlinear optics is an increasingly important field for scientific and technological applications, owing to its relevance and potential for optical and optoelectronic technologies. Currently, there is an active search for suitable nonlinear material systems with efficient conversion and small material footprint. Ideally, the material system should allow for chip-integration and room-temperature operation. Two-dimensional materials are highly interesting in this regard. Particularly promising is graphene, which has demonstrated an exceptionally large nonlinearity in the terahertz regime. Yet, the light-matter interaction length in two-dimensional materials is inherently minimal, thus limiting the overall nonlinear-optical conversion efficiency. Here we overcome this challenge using a metamaterial platform that combines graphene with a photonic grating structure providing field enhancement. We measure terahertz third-harmonic generation in this metamaterial and obtain an effective third-order nonlinear susceptibility with a magnitude as large as 3$cdot$10$^{-8}$m$^2$/V$^2$, or 21 esu, for a fundamental frequency of 0.7 THz. This nonlinearity is 50 times larger than what we obtain for graphene without grating. Such an enhancement corresponds to third-harmonic signal with an intensity that is three orders of magnitude larger due to the grating. Moreover, we demonstrate a field conversion efficiency for the third harmonic of up to $sim$1% using a moderate field strength of $sim$30 kV/cm. Finally we show that harmonics beyond the third are enhanced even more strongly, allowing us to observe signatures of up to the 9$^{rm th}$ harmonic. Grating-graphene metamaterials thus constitute an outstanding platform for commercially viable, CMOS compatible, room temperature, chip-integrated, THz nonlinear conversion applications.