Special Seminar
The Bright Future of Sub-Wavelength Photonics:
From Light Manipulation to Quantum Levitation at the Nanoscale
Federico Capasso
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Harvard University
Tuesday, January 26, 5:15 PM, Applied Physics 200
Refreshments at 5:00 PM
Presented by the Stanford Student OSA/SPIE
Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SPPs) allow one to achieve concentration of light into sub-wavelength regions thus opening up rich new directions in physical optics and photonics.
A wide range of phenomena and applications enabled by SPPs and bridging several fields, will be presented in this talk: (a) plasmonic collimators that have allowed us to dramatically reduce the divergence of semiconductor lasers, creating exciting opportunities in beam engineering; (b) plasmonic polarizers for arbitrary control of laser polarization; (c) new light sources such as plasmonic laser antennas, capable of creating intense nanospots for spatially resolved chemical imaging and ultra high density optical storage; (d) antenna arrays for surface enhanced Raman scattering; (e) frequency selective surfaces enabled by a new soft lithography technique; (f) optomechanical forces between waveguides at sub-wavelength distances. Finally at this distance scale forces arising from quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field cannot be neglected give rising to both attractive and repulsive Casimir forces. The latter, recently measured by us for the first time, could lead to ultralow friction mechanical devices based on quantum levitation.
Federico Capasso is the Robert Wallace Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard University, which he joined in 2003 after a 27 year career at Bell Labs where he did research, became Bell Labs Fellow and held several management positions including Vice President for Physical Research.
His research has spanned a broad range of topics from applications to basic science in the areas of electronics, photonics, mesoscopic physics, nanotechnology and quantum electrodynamics. He is a co-inventor of the quantum cascade laser, a fundamentally new light source, which has now been commercialized. In recent years, he has been involved in fundamental studies of the Casimir force, including the first measurement of a repulsive Casimir force.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Member of the Franklin Institute. His awards include the King Faisal International Prize for Science, the American Physical Society Arthur Schawlow Prize, the IEEE Edison Medal, the Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute, the Optical Society of America Wood Prize, the Materials Research Society Medal, the Rank Prize in Optoelectronics, the IOP Duddell Medal, the Willis Lamb Medal, the IEEE David Sarnoff Award, the IEEE-LEOS Streifer Award, the LVMH Leonardo Da Vinci Prize, and the Welker Medal. He is a Fellow of the OSA, APS, IEEE, SPIE, IOP and AAAS.
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