Photonic metamaterials

The subwavelength periodicity distinguishes photonic metamaterials from . Photonic metamaterials are nanostructured materials with special optical properties. They can cause curious phenomena like negative refraction. Metamaterials are artificially structured media with unit cells much smaller than the wavelength of light.

They have proved to possess novel electromagnetic properties, such as negative magnetic permeability and negative refractive index.

This enables applications such as negative refraction, superlensing .

This deceptively simple, yet powerful, truly revolutionary concept allows for achieving novel, unusual, and sometimes .

This review outlines the achievements in photonic MMs that can efficiently manipulate light waves from near-ultraviolet to . To have an impact on telecommunications technologies, such . Tailor- ing the properties of their functional building blocks (atoms) allows one to go beyond the possibilities of usual materials. For example, magnetic dipole moments at optical frequencies (µ = 1) become. They are made from assemblies of multiple elements fashioned from composite materials such as metals or plastics. The materials are usually arranged in repeating patterns, at scales that are smaller than the . The nanoscale metamaterial building blocks can be moved fast, poten- tially offering modulation at gigahertz frequencies.

Reconfigurable nanomechanical photonic metamaterials. Metamaterials have not only enabled unprecedented flexibility in producing unconventional optical properties that are not found in nature, they have also provided exciting potential to create customized nonlinear media with high-order properties correlated to linear behaviour. We demonstrate that spatial arrangement and optical properties of metamaterial nanostructures can be controlled dynamically using currents and magnetic fields.

Mechanical deformation of metamaterial arrays is driven by both resistive heating of bimorph nanostructures and the Lorentz force that acts on charges moving in . The vast majority of photonic metamaterials has been fabricated by electron-beam lithography and evaporation of metal films, both of which are well-established two-dimensional . Tailoring the properties of their functional building blocks (atoms) allows one to go beyond the possibilities of usual materials. Switchable and tunable metamaterials are expanding areas of research driven by the development of nanophotonic all- optical data processing circuits, optical memory, smart surfaces, adaptable detection, imaging systems, and transformation optics devices. Several avenues are being explored.

Intermediate Materials, Volume, Value. Thulium Hafnite, 1m 3000. In metamaterials , electric (magnetic) dipoles can be excited by the electric ( magnetic) component of the incident light field.

Visualization of an artificial fluid with a . Photonics and advanced materials are key enabling technologies for the 21st century. Displays, laser surgery and manufacturing, metrology and many security . Chiral structures exhibit strong interactions with circularly polarized light , and have been demonstrated to show many polarization-dependent properties. Various chiral structures exhibit some level of circular dichroism, where right- handed and left-handed circularly polarized waves experience . We demonstrate that resonant optical forces generated within all-dielectric planar photonic metamaterials at near-infrared illumination wavelengths can be an order of magnitude larger than in corresponding plasmonic metamaterials, reaching levels many tens of times greater than the force resulting from radiation pressure. Subproject Leader: Martin Wegener.

Institut für Angewandte Physik , KIT. Contributing Scientists: Present: Justyna Gansel, Martin Husnik .