New Horizons in Near-Zero Refractive Index Photonics and Hyperbolic Metamaterials.

The engineering of the spatial and temporal properties of both the electric permittivity and the refractive index of materials is at the core of photonics. When vanishing to zero, those two variables provide efficient knobs to control light-matter interactions. This Perspective aims at providing an overview of the state of the art and the challenges in emerging research areas where the use of near-zero refractive index and hyperbolic metamaterials is pivotal, in particular, light and thermal emission, nonlinear optics, sensing applications, and time-varying photonics.

Feature issue introduction: temporal and spatiotemporal metamaterials.

Temporal modulation of material parameters provides a new degree of freedom for metamaterials, metasurfaces and wave-matter interactions as a whole. In time-varying media the electromagnetic energy may not be conserved, and the time reversal symmetry may be broken, which may lead to novel physical effects with potential applications. Currently, theoretical and experimental aspects of this field are rapidly advancing, expanding our understanding of wave propagation in such complex spatiotemporal platforms. This field promises novel possibilities and directions in research, innovation and exploration.

An Archimedes' screw for light.

An Archimedes' Screw captures water, feeding energy into it by lifting it to a higher level. We introduce the first instance of an optical Archimedes' Screw, and demonstrate how this system is capable of capturing light, dragging it and amplifying it. We unveil new exact analytic solutions to Maxwell's Equations for a wide family of chiral space-time media, and show their potential to achieve chirally selective amplification within widely tunable parity-time-broken phases. Our work, which may be readily implemented via pump-probe experiments with circularly polarized beams, opens a new direction in the physics of time-varying media by merging the rising field of space-time metamaterials and that of chiral systems, and offers a new playground for topological and non-Hermitian photonics, with potential applications to chiral spectroscopy and sensing.

Advances and Prospects in Topological Nanoparticle Photonics.

Topological nanophotonics is a new avenue for exploring nanoscale systems from visible to THz frequencies, with unprecedented control. By embracing their complexity and fully utilizing the properties that make them distinct from electronic systems, we aim to study new topological phenomena. In this Perspective, we summarize the current state of the field and highlight the use of nanoparticle systems for exploring topological phases beyond electronic analogues. We provide an overview of the tools needed to capture the radiative, retardative, and long-range properties of these systems. We discuss the application of dielectric and metallic nanoparticles in nonlinear systems and also provide an overview of the newly developed topic of topological insulator nanoparticles. We hope that a comprehensive understanding of topological nanoparticle photonic systems will allow us to exploit them to their full potential and explore new topological phenomena at very reduced dimensions.

Wood Anomalies and Surface-Wave Excitation with a Time Grating.

In order to confine waves beyond the diffraction limit, advances in fabrication techniques have enabled subwavelength structuring of matter, achieving near-field control of light and other types of waves. The price is often expensive fabrication needs and the irreversibility of device functionality, as well as the introduction of impurities, a major contributor to losses. In this Letter, we propose temporal inhomogeneities, such as a periodic drive in the electromagnetic properties of a surface which supports guided modes, as an alternative route for the coupling of propagating waves to evanescent modes across the light line, thus circumventing the need for subwavelength fabrication, and achieving the temporal counterpart of the classical Wood anomaly. We show analytically and numerically how this concept is valid for any material platform and at any frequency, and propose and model a realistic experiment in graphene to couple terahertz radiation to plasmons with unit efficiency, demonstrating that time modulation of material properties could be a tunable, lower-loss and fast-switchable alternative to the subwavelength structuring of matter for near-field wave control.

Fresnel drag in space-time-modulated metamaterials.

A moving medium drags light along with it as measured by Fizeau and explained by Einstein's theory of special relativity. Here we show that the same effect can be obtained in a situation where there is no physical motion of the medium. Modulations of both the permittivity and permeability, phased in space and time in the form of traveling waves, are the basis of our model. Space-time metamaterials are represented by effective bianisotropic parameters, which can in turn be mapped to a moving homogeneous medium. Hence these metamaterials mimic a relativistic effect without the need for any actual material motion. We discuss how both the permittivity and permeability need to be modulated to achieve these effects, and we present an equivalent transmission line model.

Broadband Tunable THz Absorption with Singular Graphene Metasurfaces.

By exploiting singular spatial modulations of the graphene conductivity, we design a broadband, tunable THz absorber whose efficiency approaches the theoretical upper bound for a wide absorption band with a fractional bandwidth of 185%. Strong field enhancement is exhibited by the modes of this extended structure, which is able to excite a wealth of high-order surface plasmons, enabling deeply subwavelength focusing of incident THz radiation. Previous studies have shown that the conductivity can be modulated at GHz frequencies, which might lead to the development of efficient high-speed broadband switching by an atomically thin layer.

Plasmonic Nanoprobes for Stimulated Emission Depletion Nanoscopy.

Plasmonic nanoparticles influence the absorption and emission processes of nearby emitters due to local enhancements of the illuminating radiation and the photonic density of states. Here, we use the plasmon resonance of metal nanoparticles in order to enhance the stimulated depletion of excited molecules for super-resolved nanoscopy. We demonstrate stimulated emission depletion (STED) nanoscopy with gold nanorods with a long axis of only 26 nm and a width of 8 nm. These particles provide an enhancement of up to 50% of the resolution compared to fluorescent-only probes without plasmonic components irradiated with the same depletion power. The nanoparticle-assisted STED probes reported here represent a ∼2 × 103 reduction in probe volume compared to previously used nanoparticles. Finally, we demonstrate their application toward plasmon-assisted STED cellular imaging at low-depletion powers, and we also discuss their current limitations.

Graphene as a Tunable Anisotropic or Isotropic Plasmonic Metasurface.

We demonstrate a tunable plasmonic metasurface by considering a graphene sheet subject to a periodically patterned doping level. The unique optical properties of graphene result in electrically tunable plasmons that allow for extreme confinement of electromagnetic energy in the technologically significant regime of THz frequencies. Here, we add an extra degree of freedom by using graphene as a metasurface, proposing to dope it with an electrical gate patterned in the micron or submicron scale. By extracting the effective conductivity of the sheet, we characterize metasurfaces periodically modulated along one or two directions. In the first case, and making use of the analytical insight provided by transformation optics, we show an efficient control of THz radiation for one polarization. In the second case, we demonstrate a metasurface with an isotropic response that is independent of wave polarization and orientation.

Transformation optics for plasmonics.

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 top of the metal surface. We describe the general methodology for the design of transformation optical devices for surface plasmons and analyze, for proof-of-principle purposes, three representative examples with different functionalities: a beam shifter, a cylindrical cloak, and a ground-plane cloak.