FYI:
Prof. Harry Atwater
Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science
California Institute of Technology
Date: Tuesday, November 29th
Time: 12noon-1PM (*Food will be served* 11:45AM-12noon)
Place: 4-163
Tuning Light-Matter Interactions in Nanostructures Approaching the Atomic-Thickness Scale
Progress in understanding resonant subwavelength optical structures has fueled a worldwide
explosion of interest in both fundamental processes and nanophotonic devices for imaging,
sensing, solar energy conversion and thermal radiation control. However, for most
nanophotonic materials, the optical properties are fixed at the time of fabrication.
Achieving active tunable of the optical properties to modify the light matter interaction
at the nanoscale which is an emerging opportunity to bringmetamaterials and metasurfaces
to life as dynamic objects composed of tunable nanoscaleresonators and antennas for
various application. Electrical tuning of the carrier density in conducting oxides,
transition metal nitrides and two-dimensional materials enables the optical dispersion of
individual structures to be altered from dielectric to plasmonic, yielding active
nano-antenna arrays with gate tunable phase and amplitude modulation of absorption,
radiative emission and scattering. Operation of individual patch antennas and beam
steering phased arrays of antennas will be discussed.
MIT Lemelson Presidential Fellow
NSF Graduate Research Fellow
Photonics and Modern Electro-Magnetics
Group<http://www.mit.edu/~soljacic/>