Nanoengineering the coherent, thermal and quantum state of light using metamaterials
Zubin Jacob, Ph.D.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Canada
Abstract:
We consider various examples to show that metamaterials (artificial nanostructured media) present a unified platform to control all three states of light at the nanoscale: coherent states that occur in a laser, thermal states as in blackbody radiation and quantum states (eg: single photons). The electrical engineer is often concerned with controlling the coherent state of light (as in a laser), a mechanical engineer might be more interested in controlling radiation from thermal fluctuations while a physicist looks for ways to manipulate the non-classical properties of light. We will describe different classes of metamaterials (epsilon-near-zero, magnetic, hyperbolic and others) each with its unique potential for controlling light-matter interaction. The main applications of such metamaterials will be presented ranging from thermophotovoltaics to quantum nanophotonics.
Biosketch:
Zubin Jacob is currently an Assistant Professor of ECE at the University of Alberta, Canada. Prior to joining the University of Alberta, he completed his Ph.D from Purdue University (2010) where he received the Dmitri N. Chorafas best dissertation prize awarded only to around 20 students annually worldwide. He completed his M.A.E.E (2006) and M.S.E.E (2007) from Princeton University and B.Tech in Electrical Engineering (2004) from the Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay. He has received many awards for his research, including the SPIE Graduate Fellowship Award for potential long range contributions to optics and optical engineering (2008) and the IEEE Photonics Society Fellowship (2010). He acts as a reviewer for Nature Materials, Nature Photonics, Nature Communications, Physical Review Letters, Nano Letters, ACS Nano among many others. He also serves on the Editorial Board of Scientific Reports (a journal by the Nature Publishing Group) and Journal of Optics (published by the UK Institute of Physics).