Research

Epsilon-near-zero nanophotonics

Highlight activities include:

• Achieved long-range optical interactions between epsilon-near-zero thin film materials and their analogy to superconducting proximity effect in electronic systems
• Demonstrated that near-zero-index materials can serve as a cladding layer for low-loss and geometry-invariant optical waveguides for miniaturized photonics

These works were funded by the Miller research fellowship, and were published in Nature Communications, Nanophotonics, etc (including one patent).

Surface lattice resonance nanocavities

Highlight activities include:

• Achieved controlled multi-modal lasing from metal nanoparticle superlattices that enable access to multiple band-edge states in the photonic band structure
• Realized a mechanically tunable nanolaser based on metal nanoparticles on a flexible polymer matrix, as inspired by color changes of chameleons in nature
• Collaboratively demonstrated deterministic coupling of quantum emitters in hBN to plasmonic nanocavities for enhanced single-photon emission
• Collaboratively achieved continuous-wave nanoscale lasing at visible frequencies under near-infrared pumping with record-low power thresholds
• Established a robust computational approach in finite-difference time-domain methods to investigate time- and spatial- dependent lasing buildup in small photonic cavities

These works were published in Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Materials, Nano Letters, ACS Photonics etc.