The optical response of metallic structures is dominated by the dynamics of their free electron plasma. Plasmonics, the area of optics specializing in the electromagnetic behavior of heterogeneous structures with metallic inclusions, is undergoing rapid development, fueled in part by recent progress in experimental fabrication techniques and novel
theoretical approaches....
This thesis deals with applications of uniaxial anisotropic crystals for microcavity resonators with partially chaotic underlying ray dynamics. We develop an implementation of the scattering matrix formalism, and relate the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the scattering matrix to the field distribution of inside the system. Using the developed technique, we...
This dissertation concerns a broad range of unique phenomena related to the light propagation at nano- and micro-scales. To access the nano-domain, we introduce anisotropy-based waveguides with positive- and negative-index modes. These novel structures allow energy propagation in subwavelength regions and, in contrast to surface waves, have the mode structure...
In this dissertation we study the electromagnetic properties of plasmonic metamaterials. We develop an analytical description to solve the fundamental problem of free-space scattering in planar plasmonic systems by utilizing anisotropic metamaterials. We show with exact numerical simulations that these manufactured materials do completely eliminate the scattering, and even in...
In this dissertation we study the electromagnetic properties of planar waveguides
with non-magnetic strongly anisotropic dielectric cores. We develop an analytical
description of the mode propagation in these systems and show that the index
of refraction can be either positive or negative depending on the specific material
parameters. Propagating modes...
This dissertation concerns several problems in the fields of light interaction with nanostructured media, metamaterials, and plasmonics. We present a technique capable of extending operational bandwidth of hyperbolic metamaterials based on interleaved highly-doped InGaAs and undoped AlInAs multilayer stacks. The experimental results confirm theoretical predictions, exhibiting broadband negative refraction response...
We exhibit long-lived resonances in scattering from two-dimensional soft cage potentials comprised of three and four Gaussian peaks. Specific low-energy resonances with very narrow width are shown to correspond to classical multiple-reflection events. These states have much larger probability densities inside the cage than outside and mimic bound states in...
In this thesis, I present studies in the field of terahertz [THz] spectroscopy. It covers both the generation and detection of ultra-fast broadband THz pulses, as well as the transmission properties of vertically grown multi-walled carbon nanotube forests [MWCNTs]. We have found that these vertically grown MWCNTs respond strongly to...
This study used SCOUT optical modelling software to create models of the reflectance and transmittance spectra generated by mixtures of titanium dioxide (TiO2) and tin oxide (SnO2). These models enabled identification of how altering the ratio of a mixture changes the optical response. By being able to identify how altering...
Low-dimensional electronic materials offer a platform to observe biological processes with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are the closest physical analog to an ideal 1D system and can be scaled and integrated into multiplexed electronic circuitry. The molecular structure of a CNT is also biocompatible, making them...