Related papers: Physical limits on electromagnetic response

Theoretical limits and physical bounds across many areas of science, mathematics, and technology -- including Shannon's information-capacity limits, Bennett and Landauer's thermodynamic limits on computation, and G\"odel's incompleteness…

Nanoscale fabrication techniques, computational inverse design, and fields from silicon photonics to metasurface optics are enabling transformative use of an unprecedented number of structural degrees of freedom in nanophotonics. A critical…

Modern nanophotonic and meta-optical devices utilize a tremendous number of structural degrees of freedom to enhance light--matter interactions. A fundamental question is how large such enhancements can be. We develop an analytical…

This work studies the limits of far and near-field electromagnetic response of sub-wavelength scatterers, like the unitary limit and of lossless scatterers, and the ideal absorption limit of lossy particles. These limit behaviors are…

Absorption and scattering of electromagnetic waves by dielectric media are of fundamental importance in many branches of physics. In this Letter we analytically derived the ultimate upper limits for the absorbed and scattered powers by any…

Optical force and torque provide unprecedented control on the spatial motion of small particles. A valid scientific question, that has many practical implications, concerns the existence of fundamental upper bounds for the achievable force…

Tunable and multi-functional nanophotonic devices are used for applications from beam steering to sensing. Yet little is understood about fundamental limits to their functionality. The difficulty lies with the fact that it is a single…

Near-field optics is an exciting frontier of photonics and plasmonics. The tandem of strongly localized fields and enhanced emission rates offers significant opportunities for wide-ranging applications, while also creating basic questions:…

A general framework for determining fundamental bounds in nanophotonics is introduced in this paper. The theory is based on convex optimization of dual problems constructed from operators generated by electromagnetic integral equations. The…

Using sum rules and a new dipole-free sum-over-states expression, we calculate the fundamental limits of the dispersion of the real and imaginary parts of all electronic nonlinear-optical susceptibilities. As such, these general results can…

Enhancing the absorption and emission of electromagnetic waves over a broad range of wavelengths is a topic of fundamental and applied interest in photonics and energy research. In the context of light trapping in solar cells, for example,…

The effects of a nonzero photon rest mass can be incorporated into electromagnetism in a simple way using the Proca equations. In this vein, two interesting implications regarding the possible existence of a massive photon in nature, i.e.,…

Rapid developments in the emerging field of stretchable and conformable photonics necessitate analytical expressions for boundary conditions at metasurfaces of arbitrary geometries. Here, we introduce the concept of conformal boundary…

Expanding the frontiers of information processing technologies and, in particular, computing with ever increasing speed and capacity has long been recognized an important societal challenge, calling for the development of the next…

Rapid modulation of the electromagnetic response in both time and space creates temporal boundaries in the medium and leads to time-reflection and time-refraction of light and to the eventual formation of the photonic time crystal within…

Investigating the interaction of electron beams with materials and light has been a field of research since more than a century. The field was advanced theoretically by the raise of quantum mechanics and technically by the introduction of…

Recent advances in photonic optimization have enabled calculation of performance bounds for a wide range of electromagnetic objectives, albeit restricted to single-material systems. Motivated by growing theoretical interest and fabrication…

Research in photonic computing has flourished due to the proliferation of optoelectronic components on photonic integration platforms. Photonic integrated circuits have enabled ultrafast artificial neural networks, providing a framework for…

This article reviews the material properties that enable maximum optical response. We highlight theoretical results that enable shape-independent quantification of material "figures of merit," ranging from classical sum rules to more recent…

We firstly revisit the importance, naturalness and limitations of the so-called optical metrics for describing the propagation of light rays in the limit of geometric optics. We then exemplify their flexibility and nontriviality in some…