Theory of epsilon-near-zero modes in ultrathin films

Campione, Salvatore; Brener, Igal; Marquier, François

doi:10.1103/physrevb.91.121408

Cited by 240 publications

(235 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Combining these two can lead to effective material properties with yet unexplored functionality and tunability. As the layer thicknesses d are further reduced, extreme optical confinement λ/d > 1000 may be achieved which is typically inaccessible in plasmonics due to the much shorter wavelengths employed 47 . In the ultimate regime of atomicscale heterostructures 25,26 , one can additionally expect the optical properties to deviate from calculations using bulk parameters of the constituent materials due to microscopic modification of the material properties 25 .…”

Section: E Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generalized 4 × 4 matrix formalism for light propagation in anisotropic stratified media: study of surface phonon polaritons in polar dielectric heterostructures

2017

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We present a generalized 4×4 matrix formalism for the description of light propagation in birefringent stratified media. In contrast to previous work, our algorithm is capable of treating arbitrarily anisotropic or isotropic, absorbing or non-absorbing materials and is free of discontinous solutions. We calculate the reflection and transmission coefficients and derive equations for the electric field distribution for any number of layers. The algorithm is easily comprehensible and can be straight forwardly implemented in a computer program. To demonstrate the capabilities of the approach, we calculate the reflectivities, electric field distributions, and dispersion curves for surface phonon polaritons excited in the Otto geometry for selected model systems, where we observe several distinct phenomena ranging from critical coupling to mode splitting, and surface phonon polaritons in hyperbolic media.

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Section: E Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generalized 4 × 4 matrix formalism for light propagation in anisotropic stratified media: study of surface phonon polaritons in polar dielectric heterostructures

2017

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“…By presenting a modal analysis, we now show that the physical origin of the bulk absorption in metamaterials is due to the excitation of leaky bulk polaritons called Ferrel-Berreman modes [35][36][37]. As a matter of fact, volume charge oscillations at the ENZ of the metal (bulk or volume plasmons) are formed by the bulk metal.…”

Section: The Dispersion Relationsmentioning

confidence: 91%

Tunable surface waves at the interface separating different graphene-dielectric composite hyperbolic metamaterials

Gric

Hess

2017

Opt. Express

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Despite the fact that metal is the most common conducting constituent element in the fabrication of metamaterials, one of the advantages of graphene over metal is that its conductivity can be controlled by the Fermi energy. Here, we theoretically investigate multilayer structures comprising alternating graphene and dielectric layers as a class of hyperbolic metamaterials for THz frequencies based on a general simple model of the graphene and the dielectric layers. By employing a method of matching the tangential components of the electrical and magnetic fields, we derive the relevant dispersion relations and demonstrate that tuning can be achieved by modifying the Fermi energy. Moreover, tunability of the graphene-dielectric heterostructures can be enhanced further by changing either the thickness of the dielectric layers or the number of graphene sheets employed. Calculated dispersion relations, propagation lengths of plasmon modes in the system are presented. This allows us to characterize and categorize the modes into two groups: FerrelBerreman modes and surface plasmon polaritons. 85-90 (1985). 498-512 (1967). 39. A. McAlister and E. Stern, "Plasma resonance absorption in thin metal films," Phys.

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“…We chose the geometric parameters of the antenna such that its fundamental dipole resonance occurs at this wavelength. The thin ITO layer supports a lossy bulk-plasma mode at the zero-permittivity wavelength [29,30,31]. The linear optical transmission measurement of the metasurface (Fig.…”

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confidence: 99%

Large optical nonlinearity of nanoantennas coupled to an epsilon-near-zero material

et al. 2018

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The size and operating energy of a nonlinear optical device are fundamentally constrained by the weakness of the nonlinear optical response of common materials. Here, we report that a 50-nm-thick optical metasurface made of optical dipole antennas coupled to an epsilon-near-zero material exhibits a broadband (∼ 400 nm bandwidth) and ultrafast (recovery time less than 1 ps) intensitydependent refractive index n 2 as large as −3.73 ± 0.56 cm 2 /GW. Furthermore, the metasurface exhibits a maximum optically induced refractive index change of ±2.5 over a spectral range of ∼ 200 nm. The inclusion of low-Q nanoantennas on an epsilon-near-zero thin film not only allows one to design a metasurface with an unprecedentedly large nonlinear optical response but also offers the flexibility to tailor the sign of the response. Our technique allows one to overcome a longstanding challenge in nonlinear optics, namely that of finding a material for which the nonlinear contribution to the refractive index is of the order of unity. It consequently offers the possibility of designing low-power nonlinear nano-optical devices with orders-of-magnitude smaller footprints.All-optical signal processing and computation are often hailed as breakthrough technologies for the next generation of computation and communication devices. Two important parameters of such devices, energy consumption and size, critically depend on 1 the strength of the nonlinear optical response of the materials from which they are made. However, materials typically exhibit an extremely weak nonlinear optical response. This property makes designing subwavelength all-optical active devices extremely difficult. Thus, all-optical active devices tend to have large footprints, which limits the integration density to many orders of magnitude smaller than what can be achieved in a state-of-the-art electronic integrated circuits [1,2]. Thus, materials with much stronger nonlinear optical responses are needed in order to enable integrated high-density on-chip nonlinear optical devices.Over the years several approaches have been explored to enhance the intrinsic nonlinear optical response of materials, including local field enhancement using composite structures [3,4,5], plasmonic structures [6,7], and metamaterials [8,9,10,11]. However, these techniques offer only limited control over the magnitude (and sign when applicable) of the wavelength-dependent nonlinear response, and typically involve a trade-off between the strength of the nonlinearity and the spectral position of the peak nonlinear response. It has been reported recently that materials with vanishingly small permittivitycommonly known as epsilon-near-zero or ENZ material -exhibit intriguing linear [12,13,14,15,16] and large nonlinear responses [17,18,19,20,21]. However, an ENZ material has a large nonlinear response over only a relatively narrow spectral range. Furthermore, the zero-permittivity wavelength, strength of the nonlinear response, and the losses depend on the optical properties of the ENZ material. In com...

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Theory of epsilon-near-zero modes in ultrathin films

Cited by 240 publications

References 29 publications

Generalized 4 × 4 matrix formalism for light propagation in anisotropic stratified media: study of surface phonon polaritons in polar dielectric heterostructures

Generalized 4 × 4 matrix formalism for light propagation in anisotropic stratified media: study of surface phonon polaritons in polar dielectric heterostructures

Tunable surface waves at the interface separating different graphene-dielectric composite hyperbolic metamaterials

Large optical nonlinearity of nanoantennas coupled to an epsilon-near-zero material

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