The optical transmission of resonant guided-mode gratings patterned on suspended silicon nitride thin films and illuminated at normal incidence with a Gaussian beam are investigated both experimentally and theoretically. Effects due to the beam focusing and its finite size are accounted for by a phenomenological coupled mode model whose predictions are found to be in very good agreement with the experimentally measured spectra for various grating structures and beam sizes, and which allow for a detailed analysis of the respective magnitude of these effects. These results are highly relevant for the design and optimization of such suspended structured films which are widely used for photonics, sensing and optomechanics applications.
A one-dimensional dielectric grating, based on a simple geometry, is proposed and investigated to enhance light absorption in a monolayer graphene exploiting guided mode resonances. Numerical findings reveal that the optimized configuration is able to absorb up to 60% of the impinging light at normal incidence for both TE and TM polarizations resulting in a theoretical enhancement factor of about 26 with respect to the monolayer graphene absorption (about 2.3%). Experimental results confirm this behaviour showing CVD graphene absorbance peaks up to about 40% over narrow bands of few nanometers. The simple and flexible design paves the way for the realization of innovative, scalable and easy-to-fabricate graphene-based optical absorbers.
In this letter, a new approach to perform edge detection is presented using an all-dielectric CMOS-compatible metasurface. The design is based on guided-mode resonance which provides a high quality factor resonance to make the edge detection experimentally realizable. The proposed structure that is easy to fabricate, can be exploited for detection of edges in two dimensions due to its symmetry. Also, the trade-off between gain and resolution of edge detection is discussed which can be adjusted by appropriate design parameters. The proposed edge detector has also the potential to be used in ultrafast analog computing and image processing.
We demonstrate first- and second-order spatial differentiation of an optical beam transverse profile using thin suspended subwavelength gratings. Highly reflective one-dimensional gratings are patterned on suspended 200 nm-thick silicon nitride membranes using Electron Beam Lithography and plasma etching. The optical transmission of these gratings, designed for illumination with either TM or TE polarized light, are experimentally measured under normal and oblique incidence and found to be in excellent agreement with the predictions of an analytical coupled-mode model as well as Rigorous Coupled Wave Analysis numerical simulations. High quality first- and second-order spatial differentiation of a Gaussian beam are observed in transmission at oblique and normal incidence, respectively. Such easy-to-fabricate, ultrathin and loss-free optical components may be attractive for beam shaping and optical information processing and computing.
In this work we study the temperature dependence of the equilibrium variance of critical fluctuations near the QCD critical point. In particular, we take the finite size of the fireball created in heavy-ion collisions into account and systematically obtain corrections to the leading-order result. We find that not only is the variance globally reduced in a finite size system, but for certain combinations of parameters a two-peak structure can develop for temperatures near the critical point.
We study second harmonic generation in nonlinear, GaAs gratings. We find large enhancement of conversion efficiency when the pump field excites the guided mode resonances of the grating. Under these circumstances the spectrum near the pump wavelength displays sharp resonances characterized by dramatic enhancements of local fields and favorable conditions for second harmonic generation, even in regimes of strong linear absorption at the harmonic wavelength. In particular, in a GaAs grating pumped at 1064nm, we predict second harmonic conversion efficiencies approximately five orders of magnitude larger than conversion rates achievable in either bulk or etalon structures of the same material.