Tailoring of electromagnetic spontaneous emission predicted by E. M. Purcell more than 50 years ago has undoubtedly proven to be one of the most important effects in the rich areas of quantum optics and nanophotonics. Although during the past decades the research in this field has been focused on electric dipole emission, the recent progress in nanofabrication and study of magnetic quantum emitters, such as rare‐earth ions, has stimulated the investigation of the magnetic side of spontaneous emission. Here, we review the state‐of‐the‐art advances in the field of spontaneous emission enhancement of magnetic dipole quantum emitters with the use of various nanophotonics systems. We provide the general theory describing the Purcell effect of magnetic emitters, overview realizations of specific nanophotonics structures allowing for the enhanced magnetic dipole spontaneous emission, and give an outlook on the challenges in this field, which remain open to future research.
Engineering of intensity and direction of radiation from a single quantum emitter by means of structuring of their environment at the nanoscale is at the cornerstone of modern nanophotonics. Systems exhibiting spin–orbit coupling of light are of particular interest in this context. In this letter, we have demonstrated that the asymmetrical excitation of a high-index subwavelength (λ/3−λ/2) dielectric nanoparticle by a point dipole source located in a notch at its surface results in formation of a chiral near field, which is similar to that of a circularly polarized dipole or quadrupole. Using numerical simulations, we have shown that this effect is the result of a higher multipole (quadrupole and octupole) modes excitation within the nanoparticle. We have applied this effect for unidirectional excitation of dielectric waveguide and surface plasmon-polariton modes. We have achieved the value of front–to–back ratio up to 5.5 for dielectric waveguide and to 7.5 for the plasmonic one. Our results are important for the integrated nanophotonics and quantum information processing systems.
We study periodic lattices of silicon nanorods and introduce the concept of a phase diagram that characterizes a transition between the regimes of photonic crystals and the dielectric metamaterials when the lattice spacing and operational wavelength vary. We find the conditions when a hexagonal periodic lattice of silicon nanorods can operate as a metamaterial described by averaged parameters. In general, we reveal that the metamaterial regime can be achieved for dielectric permittivity exceeding the value ε = 14, being commonly available for semiconductors in both visible and near-infrared frequency ranges. Thus, advanced semiconductor technologies can offer a versatile platform for novel designs of all-dielectric Mie-resonant metadevices.
Spontaneous emission of light from materials is typically associated with electric dipole transitions. However, nanoscale emitters with strong magnetic dipole transitions also exist in nature, and they have been intensively studied in recent years. Similarly to electric dipole transitions, the spontaneous decay rate of magnetic dipole emitters can be controlled led by properly engineering the local density of optical states. This paper reviews the recent progress in enhancing magnetic dipole spontaneous emission using various nanophotonic approaches, ranging from planar systems to nanoantennas and artificially engineered metamaterials. (Picture: Denis G Baranov et al., article number 1600268, in this issue)
Coupling of electric and magnetic responses of a scatterer known as bianisotropy enables rich physics and unique optical phenomena, including asymmetric absorption or reflection, one-way transparency, and photonic topological phases. Here we demonstrate yet another feature stemming from bianisotropic response, namely, polarization-dependent scattering of light by bianisotropic dielectric meta-atom with broken mirror symmetry, which yields a photonic analogue of spin Hall effect. Based on a simple dipole model, we explain the origin of the effect confirming our conclusions by experimental observation of photonic spin Hall effect both for a single meta-atom and for an array of them.
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