Abstract
Thermal emission is often viewed as unpolarized and nearly isotropic. The emission from micro/nanostructured materials, however, can be linearly or circularly polarized. Tailoring the polarization of thermal radiation has important applications in advanced energy systems, remote sensing, and nanomanufacturing. We use fluctuational electrodynamics to calculate thermal emission and spectral reflection from multilayer structures. The polarization state is fully characterized by the Stokes vector, while the 4ยด4 Mueller matrix determines the polarimetric reflectance. We have built mid-infrared polarimeter and emissometer to characterize nanostructured surfaces or metasurfaces. The measurement results compared well with calculations using full-wave solutions. The results help understand the polarization nature of thermal emission from micro/nanostructures for the design and realization of polarization control of thermal radiation.
About the Speaker Zhuomin Zhang is the J. Erskine Love, Jr. Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Science and Technology of China and a Ph.D. degree from MIT. He worked at NIST and University of Florida before joining Georgia Tech. His research interests are in micro/nanoscale heat transfer, especially nanoscale thermal radiation. Dr. Zhang has co-authored more than 235 journal papers and given over 400 invited and contributed presentations. Professor Zhang has made seminal contributions to the theory and measurements of spectral radiative properties of solids and thin films as well as micro/nanostructures including photonic crystals, gratings, carbon nanotube arrays, metamaterials, and two-dimensional materials. His research findings have advanced the understanding of thermal emission and near-field radiative transfer in nanostructured materials. Professor Zhang has written a textbook on Nano/Microscale Heat Transfer (1st ed. 2007; 2nd ed. 2020), which has been adopted or used as a major reference by educators teaching relevant courses in many universities worldwide. He currently serves as an Editor-in-Chief of the Annual Review of Heat Transfer and an Associate Editor of several prestigious journals, such as the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer and the AIAA Journal of Thermophysics. Dr. Zhang is a Fellow and Honorary Member of ASME, AAAS Fellow, and APS Fellow. He was a recipient of the 1999 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), 2015 ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award, 2021 ASME Yeram S. Touloukian Award, 2021 AIAA Thermophysics Award, and the 2025 Elsevier/JQSRT Poynting Award on Radiative Transfer.
Host: Professor Lili Cai