Experimental Probing of Photonic Density of States in Hyperbolic Metamaterial
Abstract
In the metamaterial with hyperbolic dispersion (an array of silver nanowires in alumina membrane) we have observed six-fold reduction of the emission life-time of dye deposited onto the metamaterial's surface. This serves as the evidence of the earlier predicted high density of photonic states in hyperbolic metamaterials. Metamaterials are engineered composite materials containing sub-wavelength inclusions (meta-"atoms") that often have custom-tailored shapes, sizes, mutual arrangements, and orientations. Near-fantastic theoretical predictions and experimental demonstrations include but are not limited to negative index of refraction, focusing and imaging with infinitely high resolution, and invisibility cloaking. Metamaterials with hyperbolic dispersion, in which different elements of the dielectric tensor have different signs, enable the phenomena of negative refraction and hyperlens. Hyperbolic materials are predicted to have broad-band singularity of photonic density of states, which causes enhanced and highly directional spontaneous emission and enables a variety of devices with new functionalities, including a single-photon gun. In this work, we probed the photonic density of states in hyperbolic metamaterials experimentally and found the experimental results to be in a qualitative agreement with the theoretical predictions.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2009
- Accession Number
- ADA523097
Entities
People
- D. Dryden
- E. E. Narimanov
- G. Nataraj
- Guo‐Niu Zhu
- Huanan Li
- M. A. Noginov
- M. Mayy
- Yu. A. Barnakov
- Z. Jacob
Organizations
- Norfolk State University