Engineering light scattering with low-loss dielectric nanostructures (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

The ability to manipulate light-matter interactions using complex, aperiodic electromagnetic media is at the heart of current nanoplasmonics and metamaterials technologies. Efficient approaches for multiscale electromagnetic field enhancement, concentration and manipulation of fields with designed spatial-frequency spectra in complex media enable the control of propagating and non-propagating electromagnetic modes in optical nanostructures with broadband/multi-band enhanced responses. Besides its fundamental interest, photonic-plasmonic coupling in complex aperiodic environments is also of great importance for a number of device applications such as nano-antennas, ultrafast optical switchers, nanoscale energy concentrators, laser nano-cavities, and optical biochemical sensors. In this talk, I will discuss our work on the engineering of light scattering and resonance phenomena in low-loss dielectric nanostructures with designed aperiodic geometries for active devices integrated atop the widespread and inexpensive silicon platform. In particular, I will discuss applications to the optical beam shaping of partially coherent radiation and absorption enhancement in thin-film optical photodetectors and solar cells. To this purpose, a new class of aperiodic media generated from prime numbers in complex quadratic fields will be introduced, and their distinctive scattering properties will be discussed within the rigorous Green's matrix spectral method. The presented work will focus on the design, fabrication and characterization of novel photonic nanostructures that enables the control of anomalous light transport phenomena in silicon-compatible low-loss materials, such as the recently demonstrated logarithmic photon sub-diffusion, thus defining a novel approach to tailor light-matter interactions for technologically relevant applications to optical sensing, light emission, and energy conversion on a chip.