Nonlinear photonics in metal and graphene-based nanostructures

TYPESpecial Seminar - Solid State Institute, Technion
Speaker:Dr.Andrea Marini
Affiliation:ICFO – The Institute of Photonic Sciences, Barcelona, Spain
Date:22.01.2017
Time:11:30 - 12:30
Location:Lidow Asher Peres (502)
Remark:Host: Professor Noam Soker
Abstract:We discuss the nonlinear response of gold-based plasmonic waveguides excited with
ultrafast optical pulses, showing that interband absorption can be suppressed via selfinduced-transparency plasmon solitons, thus opening novel routes for optical processing of
information at the subwavelength scale. In addition, we discuss slow light in epsilon-nearzero materials, enabling optical data storage and the enhancement of nonlinear processes
for harmonic generation and optical control. Finally, we discuss the potential of graphene
for plasmon-based spectrometry-free sensing, high harmonic generation, and for the
development of cavity-free lasers. We show that saturable absorption of graphene occurs at
remarkably low intensities and can be exploited to achieve self-organization of light into
dissipative optical solitons in graphene-based random lasers, thus enabling single-mode
operation in such disordered structures.