Related papers: Material Limitations on the Detection Limit in Ref…
Portable and cost-effective gas sensors are gaining demand for a number of environmental, biomedical and industrial applications, yet current devices are confined into specialized labs and cannot be extended to general use. Here, we…
Recent breakthroughs in cryogenic silicon detector technology allow for the observation of single electron-hole pairs released via particle interactions within the target material. This implies sensitivity to energy depositions as low as…
Perfect lensing using negative refractive index materials and radiationless electromagnetic interference both provide extreme subwavelength focusing by "amplifying" evanescent wave components that are usually lost. This paper provides a…
A key optical parameter characterizing the existence of negative refraction in a thin layer of a composite material is the effective refractive index of an equivalent, homogenized layer with the same physical thickness as the initial…
In this work, a refractive index (RI) sensor with an effective integration of colorimetric detection and optical sensing capabilities has been developed. Colorimetric detection relies on the sensitivity of the structural color of photonic…
Photonic integrated circuit devices can be used as refractometric opto-fluidic sensors to detect the presence of analytes in solution at low concentrations. In this work, we investigate the refractive index sensitivity of silicon nitride…
Although the National Institute of Standards and Technology has measured the intrinsic quantum efficiency of Si and InGaAs APD materials to be above 98 % by building an efficient compound detector, commercially available devices have…
Diffractometric biosensing is a promising technology to overcome critical limitations of refractometric biosensors, the dominant class of label-free optical transducers. These limitations manifest themselves by higher noise and drifts due…
Optical resonators are increasingly important tools in science and technology. Their applications range from laser physics, atomic clocks, molecular spectroscopy, and single-photon generation to the detection, trapping and cooling of atoms…
We present highly sensitive refractometers based on a long-period grating in a large mode area PCF. The maximum sensitivity is 1500 nm/RIU at a refractive index of 1.33, the highest reported for any fiber grating. The minimal detectable…
Typical materials for optical Kinetic Inductance Detetectors (KIDs) are metals with a natural absorption of 30-50% in the visible and near-infrared. To reach high absorption efficiencies (90-100%) the KID must be embedded in an optical…
Metasurface analogues of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) have been a major focus of the nanophotonics field over the past several years due their ability to produce high quality factor (Q-factor) resonances for applications…
All known optical materials have an index of refraction of order unity. Despite the tremendous implications that an ultrahigh index could have for optical technologies, little research has been done on why the refractive index of materials…
Neutron reflectometry is a critical tool for investigating the structure of thin films and interfaces. However, the misapplication of the Born approximation to reflection geometry leads some to assume that the minimum thickness that may be…
At visible and infrared frequencies, metals show tantalizing promise for strong subwavelength resonances, but material loss typically dampens the response. We derive fundamental limits to the optical response of absorptive systems, bounding…
We study the dependence of the retrieval parameters, such as the electric permittivity, the magnetic permeability and the index of refraction, $n$, on the size of the unit cell of a periodic metamaterial. The convergence of the retrieved…
Conventional transparent materials at optical frequencies have refractive index values (n) greater than unity -- most commonly between about 1 and 4. This paper explores optical phenomena made possible by using materials with refractive…
Results of DC and frequency dependent conductivity in the quantum limit, i.e. hw > kT, for a broad range of dopant concentrations in nominally uncompensated, crystalline phosphorous doped silicon and amorphous niobium-silicon alloys are…
Classical, interferometric, optical lithography is diffraction limited to writing features of a size lambda/2 or greater, where lambda is the optical wavelength. Using nonclassical photon number states, entangled N at a time, we show that…
The need for semiconductor technology for crystalline silicon of the highest purity and homogeneity has provided samples exhibiting low optical absorption in the infrared range. Such silicon has become the basis for photonic elements in the…