Graphene-based photonic crystal

A novel type of photonic crystal formed by embedding a periodic array of constituent stacks of alternating graphene and dielectric discs into a background dielectric medium is proposed. The photonic band structure and transmittance of such photonic crystal are calculated. The graphene-based photonic crystals can be used effectively as the frequency filters and waveguides for the far infrared region of electromagnetic spectrum. Due to substantial suppression of absorption of low-frequency radiation in doped graphene the damping and skin effect in the photonic crystal are also suppressed. The advantages of the graphene-based photonic crystal are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Voltage-programmable liquid optical interface

Recently, there has been intense interest in photonic devices based on microfluidics, including displays and refractive tunable microlenses and optical beamsteerers, that work using the principle of electrowetting. Here, we report a novel approach to optical devices in which static wrinkles are produced at the surface of a thin film of oil as a result of dielectrophoretic forces. We have demonstrated this voltage-programmable surface wrinkling effect in periodic devices with pitch lengths of between 20 and 240 µm and with response times of less than 40 µs. By a careful choice of oils, it is possible to optimize either for high-amplitude sinusoidal wrinkles at micrometre-scale pitches or more complex non-sinusoidal profiles with higher Fourier components at longer pitches. This opens up the possibility of developing rapidly responsive voltage-programmable, polarization-insensitive transmission and reflection diffraction devices and arbitrary surface profile optical devices

Electrically tunable Bragg gratings in single mode polymer optical fiber

We present what is to our knowledge the first demonstration of a tunable fiber Bragg grating device in polymer optical fiber that utilizes a thin-film resistive heater deposited on the surface of the fiber. The polymer fiber was coated via photochemical deposition of a Pd/Cu metallic layer with a procedure induced by vacuum-ultraviolet radiation at room temperature. The resulting device, when wavelength tuned via joule heating, underwent a wavelength shift of 2 nm for a moderate input power of 160 mW, a wavelength to input power coefficient of-13.4 pm/mW, and a time constant of 1.7 s-1

Analogue of the quantum hanle effect and polarization conversion in non-hermitian plasmonic metamaterials

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Nano Letters, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see http://pubs.acs.org/page/policy/articlesonrequest/index.htmlThe Hanle effect, one of the first manifestations of quantum theory introducing the concept of coherent superposition between pure states, plays a key role in numerous aspects of science varying from applicative spectroscopy to fundamental astrophysical investigations. Optical analogues of quantum effects help to achieve deeper understanding of quantum phenomena and, in turn, to develop cross-disciplinary approaches to realizations of new applications in photonics. Here we show that metallic nanostructures can be designed to exhibit a plasmonic analogue of the quantum Hanle effect and the associated polarization rotation. In the original Hanle effect, time-reversal symmetry is broken by a static magnetic field. We achieve this by introducing dissipative level crossing of localized surface plasmons due to nonuniform losses, designed using a non-Hermitian formulation of quantum mechanics. Such artificial plasmonic "atoms" have been shown to exhibit strong circular birefringence and circular dichroism which depends on the value of loss or gain in the metal-dielectric nanostructure. © 2012 American Chemical Society.This work has been supported in part by EPSRC (UK). P.G. acknowledges Royal Society for a Newton International Fellowship. F.J.R.-F. acknowledges support from grant FPI of GV and the Spanish MICINN under contracts CONSOLIDER EMET CSD2008-00066 and TEC2011-28664-C02-02.Ginzburg, P.; Rodríguez Fortuño, FJ.; Martínez Abietar, AJ.; Zayats, AV. (2012). Analogue of the quantum hanle effect and polarization conversion in non-hermitian plasmonic metamaterials. Nano Letters. 12(12):6309-6314. https://doi.org/10.1021/nl3034174S63096314121

Polymer-cladded athermal high-index-contrast waveguides

We present a general approach to design temperature-independent high-index-contrast (HIC) waveguides using polymer claddings. Thermal stability has been a significant issue in electronic-photonic integrated circuits because of the heterogeneous heating resulting from integration with electronics. Due to silicons highly temperature-dependent optical properties, athermal performance in silicon-based devices is the critical limitation in device performance. In applications such as wavelength demultiplexing (WDM) and high-resolution spectroscopy, the thermo-optic (TO) effect results in a wavelength shifts and phase shifts in the spectral response peak of each wavelength channel, which limits the wavelength resolution and affects the spectral channel density. Instead of attempting to diminish temperature gradience across the chip, an elegant solution is to design athermal waveguides that are insensitive to ambient temperature. Thermo-optically neutral designs are achieved by choosing a polymer cladding material, whose thermo-optic coefficient is opposite to that of silicon (TOSi = +1.8×10-4 K-1). We present a comprehensive study of temperature dependence in HIC waveguides, using DuPont's polymers as the cladding materials. We provide general design criteria for athermal HIC waveguides by developing analytical and empirical expressions