Surprises on the nanoscale: Plasmonic waves that travel backward and spin birefringence without magnetic fields

08 Jan 2007 | Online Presentations | Contributor(s): Daniel Neuhauser

As nanonphotonics and nanoelectronics are pushed down towards the molecular scale, interesting effects emerge. We discuss how birefringence (different propagation of two polarizations) is manifested and could be useful in the future for two systems: coherent plasmonic transport of …

Silicon Photonics: Opportunity Challenges and Recent Results

02 Nov 2007 | Online Presentations | Contributor(s): Mario Paniccia

The silicon chip has been the mainstay of the electronics industry for the last 40 years and has revolutionized the way the world operates. Today a silicon chip the size of a fingernail contains nearly one billion transistors and has the computing power that only a decade ago would take up an …

Plasmonic Metamaterials: Unusual Optics and Applications

28 Feb 2008 | Online Presentations | Contributor(s): Igor Smolyaninov

Surface plasmon-polaritons (or plasmons) are collective excitations of the conduction electrons and the electromagnetic field on the surface of such good metals as gold and silver. Near the frequency of surface plasmon resonance plasmons may perceive regular dielectrics as negative index …

Plasmon-resonant Nanorods as Multifunctional Imaging Agents

28 Dec 2006 | Online Presentations | Contributor(s): Alexander Wei

Gold nanorods have several outstanding characteristics as optical contrast agents for biomedical imaging. Their strong optical absorption at near-infrared (NIR) frequencies can be used to generate contrast for optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging, and is well matched for …

Conquering Surface Plasmon Resonance Loss in Metallic Nanostructures

16 Oct 2007 | Online Presentations | Contributor(s): Mikhail A. Noginov

We have observed the compensation of loss in metal by gain in dielectric in the mixture of Ag aggregate and rhodamine 6G dye. The demonstrated six-fold enhancement of the Rayleigh scattering is the evidence of the enhancement of the localized surface plasmon (SP) resonance. In the attenuated …

Linear and Nonlinear Optical Devices Based on Slow Light Propagation: Figures of Merit

19 May 2008 | Online Presentations | Contributor(s): Jacob B. Khurgin

Performance of optical delay lines and nonlinear devices based on slow wave propagation in photonic crystal waveguides in the presence of higher order dispersion is analyzed and compared with other slow light schemes, such as coupled resonators, media with electromagnetically-induced …

Routing Light with Nematicons: Light Localization and Steering in Liquid Crystals

10 Oct 2007 | Online Presentations | Contributor(s): Gaetano Assanto

Nematic liquid crystals support optical spatial solitons via light-induced molecular reorientation. Such all-optical waveguides can channel a signal towards a destination, hence permitting signal routing. Owing to the inherent anisotropy of nematic liquid crystals, molecular orientation …