Low-index materials have generated substantial interest in recent years because of their unique electromagnetic modes that exhibit spaceinvariant phase. These modes permit highly concentrated fields, low group velocities, enhanced optical nonlinearities, and extended quantum coherence. In this talk, I will discuss my investigation and development of two types of low-index platforms— metal-oxide thin films and all-dielectric photonic crystals—for realizing low-index nanophotonic properties and applications. Low index metal-oxide films exhibit field enhancement, slow light effects, and ultrafast recombination, improving the efficiency of several nonlinear optical processes such as the Kerr effect, strongly coupling, and four-wave mixing negative refraction and time reversal. Alldielectric photonic crystals permit reduced optical losses through the incorporation of bound states in the continuum and have potential for quantum super-radiance with diamond vacancies.
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Clayton DeVault is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. He received his doctorate in physics from Purdue University under the supervision of Professors Vladimir Shalaev and Alexandra Boltasseva. His doctoral research focused on enhancing ultrafast nonlinear interactions in low-index metal oxide films to improve active nanophotonic device. At Harvard, Clayton continues his investigation of lowindex light-matter interactions, in all-dielectric metamaterial and photonic crystal devices. His research interests include the intersection of metamaterial and nanophotonic devices with nonlinear and quantum optics.
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For the zoom link, email Diana Morgan (morgandf@anl.gov), Kelly Foster (foster5@illinois.edu), or Becky McDuffee (mcduffbe@illinois.edu) .
