Nanophotonics: From Photonic Crystals to Plasmonics

In this special seminar, I’m going to play a documentary DVD, which shows a plenary presentation given by Professor Eli Yablonovitch of UC Berkeley at the Frontiers in Optics Conference last September. Dr. Yablonovitch is widely regarded as the father of photonic crystals. In this beautifully organized talk, he took the audience on a tour of structures far smaller than the wavelength of light and reviewed the latest progress in three of today’s hottest areas in optics: photonic crystals, silicon photonics and plasmonics. When the size of integrated circuits dropped below the critical dimension for a photonic crystal, which is about 100 nm, electronics and optics have become one thing. With the breakthrough of silicon lasers, a full toolkit for integrated optoeletronics is at hand. Finally, the emerging field of plasmonics will eventually make possible integrated optical circuits.

To help students with limited optics background better understand the talk, I’m going to give a brief tutorial of some of the background knowledge before the presentation. This will be a good opportunity for students to get a taste of conference and learn about the latest development in the field from a world-class expert.

Dr. Lingze Duan

UAH Physics