Floquet Polaritonic Metasurfaces
Abstract
ecome an exciting research topic in recent years, pushing the boundaries of nanoscale light manipulation, as they offer opportunitie,s to go well beyond the limitations of passive, linear, time-invariant systems. Phonon-assisted nonlinearities in polar crystals are, particularly exciting in this context, as they sustain low-loss exotic light-matter interactions in the mid-infrared wavelength ran,ge, of special interest for several applications of relevant to the Department of Navy (DoN). Recent research developments have show,n that natural materials may support highly nontrivial polaritonic phenomena based on their lattice symmetries, inspiring exciting o,pportunities to manipulate nanoscale light, and opening new directions as we consider patterning these natural materials at the nano,scale to further manipulate the light-matter interactions. In this project,we will explore to full extent the nontrivial dynamics of,eriodic drives. Such optically pumped metasurfaces will exploit periodic modulation of their polaritonic response to enable a pletho,ra of novel light phenomena, including exotic forms of wave amplification, pump-induced extreme anisotropy, non-Hermitian dynamics,,topological phenomena and wave engineering in synthetic dimensions.Our project will merge the extreme features of light-matter inter,actions enabled by polaritonic metasurfaces with the recent interest in Floquet physics. By leveraging the theoretical expertise, co,mputational resources and experimental facilities available in the Photonics Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center, Cit,y University of New York, we will probe the potential of low-symmetry polaritons by investigating theoretically and realizing experi,mentally polariton-assisted extreme manipulation and parametric amplification of infrared light via pump-probe experiments in natura,l Van der Waals materials and in suitably tailored metasurfaces. We will unveil far-field observations of low-symmetry hyperbolic po,laritons via design and nanofabrication of tailored polaritonic metasurfaces, and we will demonstrate dynamical topological transiti,ons and extreme nonlinear phenomena in Floquet polaritonic metasurfaces. We will extend these concepts beyond the mid-infrared wave,regime by designing, optimizing and experimentally realizing structured resonant metasurfaces mimicking similar responses in several, other frequen,ning, optimizing and experimentally demonstrating Floquet polaritonic metasurfaces. The ultimate objective of our project is to conc,eptually, numerically and experimentally realize novel, ultrathin nanophotonic devices based on polaritonic concepts dynamically mod,ulated in time through optical pumps, providing a new degree of control of the incoming signal, and extreme wave manipulation. The p,roposed efforts will have a clear impact in several areas of interest for DoN, including communications, orientation, imaging and se,nsing. Within this three-year effort, we will not only spend substantial efforts in fundamental research on novel metamaterial techn,ology, developing a rigorous theoretical framework, full-wave analysis and design of extreme anisotropy, polaritonics and Floquet me,tamaterials, but we will also introduce new experimental schemes to demonstrate their proof-of-concept realization, using near-field, and far-field characterization. Our investigations will significantly advance the general field of polaritonics and metasurfaces, a,nd train a new generation of students on exciting and inherently interdisciplinary research topics at the frontier of optics and pol,aritonics research.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jul 08, 2022
- Source ID
- N000142212448
Entities
People
- Andrea Alù
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- Research Foundation of The City University of New York
- United States Navy