The mid-infrared (mid-IR) spectral range (loosely defined as the wavelengths between 3-30μm) is a vital wavelength range for a host of sensing, imaging, and even communication applications. Reducing the dimensions of mid-IR optical devices and structures to the nanoscale is exceedingly challenging due to the diffraction limit. However, there exist significant potential benefits to such scaling, not solely in terms of size, weight, and power requirements, but also in intrinsic device performance.
Dan Wasserman,
University of Texas Austin
This presentation will describe approaches for enhancing light-matter interactions in ultra-subwavelength thin films, structures, and devices for polarization-, angle-, and wavelength-selective absorption, emission, and nonlinear response in the mid-infrared. First, I will discuss light-matter interaction at the ultimate limits of material thickness. Using this formalism, I will show recent work demonstrating perfect absorption in ultra-subwavelength films and how we can use these structures to achieve sub-picosecond nonlinear response across a range of infrared wavelengths. I will then discuss our group’s work in mid-IR plasmonics, leveraging both doped semiconductors and metaplasmonic films. I will focus on the new field of metaplasmonics, and show how we can achieve extreme mode confinement, waveguiding, and even hyperbolic response in engineered metal films only hundredths of a wavelength thick. Ultimately, I hope to demonstrate that the mid-IR provides a unique materials playground for the exploration, and implementation, of a range of light-matter interactions.
Dan Wasserman is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas Austin, where he is affiliated with the Microelectronics Research Center. Prof. Wasserman earned his Sc.B. degree in Engineering/Physics and History from Brown University in 1998 and his Master’s and Doctorate in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 2000 and 2004, respectively. In 2007, Dr. Wasserman joined the University of Massachusetts Lowell faculty as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Applied Physics, moving to the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, in the Micro and Nanotechnology Lab, becoming an Associate Professor in 2015. In 2016, Professor Wasserman joined the University of Texas at Austin.Prof. Wasserman is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award and the AFOSR Young Investigator Award, as well as the UIUC Distinguished Promotion Award, and Teaching and Advising awards and commendations at UMass and Illinois. Prof. Wasserman was named an IEEE Photonics Society Distinguished Lecturer in 2017 and was elected a Fellow of Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America) in 2018.