Related papers: A vertically-coupled liquid-crystal long-range pla…
Optical control of electronic properties is essential for future electric devices. Manipulating such properties has been limited to the microscale in spatial volume due to the wave nature of light; however, scaling down the volume is in…
Experimental evidence of mode-selective evanescent power coupling at telecommunication frequencies with efficiencies up to 75 % from a tapered optical fiber to a carefully designed metal nanoparticle plasmon waveguide is presented. The…
We investigate the switching dynamics of multistable nematic liquid crystal devices. In particular we identify a remarkably simple 2-dimensional (2D) device which exploits hybrid alignment at the surfaces to yield a bistable response. We…
From the onset of high-speed optical communications, lithium niobite (LN) has been the material of choice for electro-optic modulators owing to its large electro-optic response, wide transparent window, excellent thermal stability and…
Instabilities are discussed which take place when a nematic liquid crystal (LC) layer, enclosed between a planar reference plate and a photosensitive substrate, is illuminated with polarized light from the reference side ({\it reverse}…
Optofluidic sensors based on highly dispersive two-dimensional photonic crystal waveguides are theoretically studied. Results show that these structures are strongly sensitive to the refractive index of the infiltrated liquid (nl), which is…
In this work, we report the first demonstration of a solution processable, optically switchable 1D photonic crystal by implementing phototunable doped metal oxide nanocrystals. The resulting device structure shows bi-photonic response with…
Metasurfaces have been extensively engineered to produce a wide range of optical phenomena, allowing unprecedented control over the propagation of light. However, they are generally designed as single-purpose devices without a modifiable…
Gel-immobilized colloidal crystals were prepared to obtain hybrid plasmonic-photonic crystals, in which electric field enhancement to a greater extent than that due to localized surface plasmons (LSP) alone was expected due to coupling…
We present a novel approach for achieving tightly concentrated optical field by a hybrid photonic-plasmonic device in an integrated platform, which is a triangle-shaped metal taper mounted on top of a dielectric waveguide. This device,…
In this thesis, we propose to tackle this important issue by designing and realizing a novel nano-optical device based on the use of a photonic crystal (PC) structure to generate an efficient coupling between the external source and a NA.…
The nonlinear component of the optomechanical interaction between light and mechanical vibration promises many exciting classical and quantum mechanical applications, but is generally weak. Here we demonstrate enhancement of nonlinear…
We show that interference can be the principle of operation of an all-optical switch and other nanoscale plasmonic interference devices (PIDs). The optical response of two types of planar plasmonic waveguides is studied theoretically: bent…
Thanks to their unique properties, nematic liquid crystals feature a variety of mechanisms for light-matter interactions. For continuous-wave optical excitations, the two dominant contributions stem from reorientational and thermal…
We demonstrate that one-dimensional photonic crystals with pure nematic liquid-crystal defects can operate as all-optical switching devices based on optical orientational nonlinearities of liquid crystals. We show that such a periodic…
An opalic plasmonic sample, constituted by a hexagonal arrangement of metallized silica spheres, presents remarkable optical properties due to the mixing of periodic arrangement and singularities at the sphere touching points. It is…
Structured light beams with space-variant polarization can be efficiently generated using voltage-tunable nematic liquid-crystal (Q-plate). By appropriately selecting the input state and the retardation of the Q-plate, an optical field…
A new strategy to control the flow of surface plasmon polaritons at metallic surfaces is presented. It is based on the application of the concept of Transformation Optics to devise the optical parameters of the dielectric medium placed on…
We study stability and distortions of liquid crystal nematic order in a cell with a random heterogeneous substrate. Modeling this system as a bulk xy model with quenched disorder confined to a surface, we find that nematic order is…
The scaling of active photonic devices to deep-submicron length-scales has been hampered by the fundamental diffraction limit and the absence of materials with sufficiently strong electro-optic effects. Here, we demonstrate a solid state…