Recent advances in hyperbolic metamaterials have spurred many breakthroughs in the field of manipulating light propagation. However, the unusual electromagnetic properties also put extremely high demands on its compositional materials. Limited by the finite relative permittivity of the natural materials, the effective permittivity of the constructed hyperbolic metamaterials is also confined to a narrow range. Here, based on the proposed concept of structure-induced spoof surface plasmon, we prove that arbitrary materials can be selected to construct the hyperbolic metamaterials with independent relative effective permittivity components. Besides, the theoretical achievable ranges of the relative effective permittivity components are unlimited. As proofs of the method, three novel hyperbolic metamaterials are designed with their functionalities validated numerically and experimentally by specified directional propagation. To further illustrate the superiority of the method, an all-metal low-loss hyperbolic metamaterial filled with air is proposed and demonstrated. The proposed methodology effectively reduces the design requirement for hyperbolic metamaterials and provides new ideas for the scenarios where large permittivity coverage is needed such as microwave and terahertz focus, super-resolution imaging, electromagnetic cloaking, and so on.
We show that packed, horizontally aligned films of single-walled carbon nanotubes are hyperbolic metamaterials with ultra-subwavelength unit cells and dynamic tunability. Using Mueller-matrix ellipsometry, we characterize the films' doping-level dependent optical properties and find a broadband hyperbolic region tunable in the mid-infrared. To characterize the dispersion of in-plane hyperbolic plasmon modes, we etch the nanotube films into nanoribbons with differing widths and orientations relative to the nanotube axis, and we observe that the hyperbolic modes support strong light localization…
Aligned, densely-packed carbon nanotube metamaterials prepared using vacuum filtration are an emerging infrared nanophotonic material. We report multiple hyperbolic plasmon resonances, together spanning the mid-infrared, in individual resonators made from aligned and densely-packed carbon nanotubes. In the first near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) imaging study of nanotube metamaterial resonators, we observe distinct deeply-subwavelength field profiles at the fundamental and higher-order resonant frequencies. The wafer-scale area of the nanotube metamaterials allows us to combine thi…
We show that nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond can produce a novel quantum hyperbolic metamaterial. We demonstrate that a hyperbolic dispersion relation in diamond with NV centers can be engineered and dynamically tuned by applying a magnetic field. This quantum hyperbolic metamaterial with a tunable window for the negative refraction allows for the construction of a superlens beyond the diffraction limit. In addition to subwavelength imaging, this NV-metamaterial can be used in spontaneous emission enhancement, heat transport and acoustics, analogue cosmology, and lifetime engineering.…
The implementation of hyperbolic metamaterials as component in optical waveguides, semiconductor light emitters and solar cells has been limited by the inherent loss in the metallic layers. The features of a hyperbolic metamaterial arise by the presence of alternating metal and a dielectric layers. This work proposes that the deleterious loss characteristic of metal-based hyperbolic metamaterials can be minimized by employing a III-nitride superlattice wherein a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) functions as the metallic layer.
The robust spin and momentum valley locking of electrons in two-dimensional semiconductors make the valley degree of freedom of great utility for functional optoelectronic devices. Owing to the difference in optical selection rules for the different valleys, these valley electrons can be addressed optically. The electrons and excitons in these materials exhibit valley Hall effect, where the carriers from specific valleys are directed to different directions under electrical or thermal bias. Here we report the optical valley Hall effect where the light emission from the valley polarized exciton…
We study theoretically and numerically high density of states for hyperbolic bilayered metamaterials (HMM). It reveals that density response of HMM is reminiscent of Fermi electronic band structure of metal or semiconductors. By the method of Green function a van Hove type singularity is found in photonic density spectra of HMM with saddle point localization on photonic Fermi surface (FS) of metamaterial. Similar to the electronic systems, the photonic FS experiences instabilities induced by the changes in volume fractions of its constituents that leads to the Lifshitz type zero-temperature ph…
Hyperbolic Metamaterials, as a non-magnetic anisotropic artificial structure, show metal properties in one direction and dielectric behavior in orthogonal directions. The proposed hyperbolic metamaterial filter in this project is designed with the metal wire mesh perpendicular to the alternative layers of dielectric materials, keeps TM center wavelength unchanged for the different angle of incident light in MDIR regime. The geometric size of this nanostructure is smaller than the working wavelength and supports big wavevectors due to hyperbolic dispersion. In contrast with conventional Bragg s…
As a basic building block, optical resonant cavities (ORCs) are widely used in light manipulation; they can confine electromagnetic waves and improve the interaction between light and matter, which also plays an important role in cavity quantum electrodynamics, nonlinear optics and quantum optics. Especially in recent years, the rise of metamaterials, artificial materials composed of subwavelength unit cells, greatly enriches the design and function of ORCs. Here, we review zero-index and hyperbolic metamaterials for constructing the novel ORCs. Firstly, this paper introduces the classificatio…
Recent experiments have demonstrated that the superconducting critical temperature may be improved in various metamaterial superconductor geometries. Here, we present the results of a study of tin-based metamaterial superconductors in the epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) and hyperbolic metamaterial configurations. It was observed that Tc enhancement is significantly reduced when the metamaterial structural dimensions exceed 240nm, the superconducting coherence length in pure tin.
Tuning the macroscopic dielectric response on demand holds potential for actively tunable metaphotonics and optical devices. In recent years, graphene has been extensively investigated as a tunable element in nanophotonics. Significant theoretical work has been devoted on the tuning the hyperbolic properties of graphene/dielectric heterostructures, however, until now, such a motif has not been demonstrated experimentally. Here we focus on a graphene/polaritonic dielectric metamaterial, with strong optical resonances arising from the polar response of the dielectric, which are, in general, diff…
Hyperbolic metamaterials were initially proposed in optics to boost radiation efficiencies of quantum emitters. Adopting this concept for antenna design can allow approaching long-standing challenges in radio physics. For example, impedance matching and gain are among the most challenging antenna parameters to achieve in case when a broadband operation is needed. Here we pro-pose and numerically analyse a new compact antenna design, based on hyperbolic metamaterial slab with a patterned layer on top. Energy from a subwavelength loop antenna is shown to be efficiently harvested into bulk modes …
In recent years significant efforts have been made to design and fabricate functional nanomaterials for biomedical applications based on the control of light matter interaction at the nanometer scale. Among many other artificial materials, hyperbolic dispersion metamaterials allow to access unprecedented physical effects and mechanisms due to the extreme anisotropy of their optical constants. The unbound isofrequency surface of hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs) enable the possibility to support a virtually infinite density of states and ultra-high confinement of electromagnetic fields, allowing …
Advances in graphene plasmonics offer numerous opportunities for enabling the design and manufacture of a variety of nanoelectronics and other exciting optical devices. However, due to the limitation of material properties, its operating frequency cannot drop to the microwave range. In this work, a new concept of microwave equivalent graphene based on the ultrathin monolayer plasmonic metasurface is proposed and demonstrated. Based on this concept, elliptical and hyperbolic dispersion can be theoretically obtained by stacking the equivalent graphene metasurfaces periodically. As proofs of the …
Graphene-based hyperbolic metamaterials have been predicted to transport evanescent fields with extraordinarily large vacuum wave-vectors. It is particularly at much higher wave vector values that the commonly employed descriptional models involving structure homogenization and assumptions of an approximatively local graphene conductivity start breaking down. Here, we combine a non-local quantum conductivity model of graphene with an exact mathematical treatment of the periodic structure in order to develop a tool-set for determining the hyperbolic behavior of these graphene-based hyperbolic m…
The use of gold nanoparticles for hyperthermia therapy in near infrared (NIR) spectral regions has catalysed substantial research efforts due to the potential impact in clinical therapy applications. However, the photoscattering effect scaling with the square of the nanoparticle volume leads to a low absorption efficiency, which has hindered the utility of gold nanoparticles in NIR II regions above 1000 nm. Here, we conquer this limit by introducing hyperbolic metamaterial nanoparticles that are made of multi-layered gold/dielectric nanodisks and exhibit >70% absorption efficiency in the NIR I…
