New Horizons in Near-Zero Refractive Index Photonics and Hyperbolic Metamaterials

Michaël Lobet; Nathaniel Kinsey; Iñigo Liberal; Humeyra Caglayan; Paloma A Huidobro; Emanuele Galiffi; Jorge Ricardo Mejía-Salazar; Giovanna Palermo; Zubin Jacob; Nicolò Maccaferri

doi:10.1021/acsphotonics.3c00747

New Horizons in Near-Zero Refractive Index Photonics and Hyperbolic Metamaterials

ACS Photonics. 2023 Oct 23;10(11):3805-3820. doi: 10.1021/acsphotonics.3c00747. eCollection 2023 Nov 15.

Authors

Michaël Lobet^{1

2}, Nathaniel Kinsey³, Iñigo Liberal⁴, Humeyra Caglayan⁵, Paloma A Huidobro^{6

7}, Emanuele Galiffi⁸, Jorge Ricardo Mejía-Salazar⁹, Giovanna Palermo^{10

11}, Zubin Jacob^{12

13}, Nicolò Maccaferri^{14

15}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics and Namur Institute of Structured Materials, University of Namur, Rue de Bruxelles 61, 5000 Namur, Belgium.
² John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, 9 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States.
³ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia 23284, United States.
⁴ Department of Electrical, Electronic and Communications Engineering, Institute of Smart Cities (ISC), Public University of Navarre (UPNA), Pamplona 31006, Spain.
⁵ Faculty of Engineering and Natural Science, Photonics, Tampere University, 33720 Tampere, Finland.
⁶ Departamento de Física Téorica de la Materia Condensada and Condensed Matter Physics Center (IFIMAC), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, E-28049 Madrid, Spain.
⁷ Instituto de Telecomunicações, Instituto Superior Técnico-University of Lisbon, Avenida Rovisco Pais 1, Lisboa, 1049-001, Portugal.
⁸ Photonics Initiative, Advanced Science Research Center, City University of New York, New York, New York 10027, United States.
⁹ National Institute of Telecommunications (Inatel), Santa Rita do Sapucaí, 37540-000 MG, Brazil.
¹⁰ Department of Physics, NLHT Lab, University of Calabria, 87036 Rende, Italy.
¹¹ CNR NANOTEC-Institute of Nanotechnology, Rende (CS), 87036 Rende, Italy.
¹² Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, United States.
¹³ Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, United States.
¹⁴ Department of Physics, Umeå University, Linnaeus väg 24, 90187 Umeå, Sweden.
¹⁵ Department of Physics and Materials Science, University of Luxembourg, 162a avenue de la Faïencerie, L-1511 Luxembourg, Luxembourg.

Abstract

The engineering of the spatial and temporal properties of both the electric permittivity and the refractive index of materials is at the core of photonics. When vanishing to zero, those two variables provide efficient knobs to control light-matter interactions. This Perspective aims at providing an overview of the state of the art and the challenges in emerging research areas where the use of near-zero refractive index and hyperbolic metamaterials is pivotal, in particular, light and thermal emission, nonlinear optics, sensing applications, and time-varying photonics.

Publication types

Review