Plenary Lecture
Coherent Optical Effects of Quantum - Plasmonic Nanocomposites
Associate Professor Emmanuel Paspalakis
co-authors: Efthymios Kallos, Vassilios Yannopapas
Materials Science Department
University of Patras
Greece
E-mail: paspalak@upatras.gr
Abstract: In recent years there is increasing interest in the study of hybrid nanophotonic structures (nanocomposites) that are composed by coupling quantum emitters to plasmonic nanostructures. Examples of these structures are atoms, molecules and quantum dots that are coupled to metallic nanostructures. These hybrid nanostructures may have significantly enhanced optical response in comparison to their constituents. The large fields and the strong light confinement associated with the plasmonic resonances enable strong interaction between the electromagnetic field and the quantum emitters near plasmonic nanostructures. In addition, using the quantum emitter one may achieve external control to the optical properties of the nanocomposite. In this plenary talk, we present new theoretical results on the optical properties of quantum-plasmonic nanocomposites. In our study, we consider both simple and more complex plasmonic nanostructures, including plasmonic metamaterials. The reported results include strong modification of optical absorption and dispersion, creation of controllable slow light, as well as strong enhancement of optical nonlinearities and dipole-forbidden transitions.
Acknowledgements: This work was implemented within the framework of the Action “Supporting Postdoctoral Researchers” of the Operational Program “Education and Lifelong Learning” (Action’s Beneficiary: General Secretariat for Research and Technology), and was co-financed by the European Social Fund and the Greek State (Program Nanokallos PE3_26).
Brief Biography of the Speaker: Emmanuel Paspalakis is Associate Professor at the Materials Science Department of the University of Patras. Dr. Paspalakis obtained his PhD, under the supervision of Professor Sir Peter L. Knight FRS, from the Physics Department of Imperial College London in 1999. At the same Department he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in 1999 (6 months) and 2001 (7 months). In 11/2001 he joined the Materials Science Department of the University of Patras. His research interests cover a wide area of theoretical subjects in various areas of light-matter/material interactions. In the last few years he studies these effects mainly in semiconductor quantum wells and semiconductor quantum dots, but also in other nanostructures, such as quantum and plasmonic nanostructures complexes. Dr. Paspalakis has published 112 papers in international refereed research journals and 20 papers in extended conference proceedings and books that have obtained more than 3700 citations (h-index 32). In addition, he has more than 120 presentations in international and national scientific conferences. Dr. Paspalakis is co-editor of a book entitled “Recent Research Topics and Developments in Chemical Physics: From Quantum Scale to Macroscale”, (Transworld Research Network, 2009) and of three special issues in international scientific journals: “Quantum Control of Matter and Light”, Journal of Modern Optics (2009), “Slow Light”, Journal of Optics (2010) and “Emerging Trends and Novel Materials in Photonics”, Photonics and Nanostructures: Fundamentals and Applications (2011). He is also associate editor of Vol. 1288 of AIP Conference Proceedings. Dr. Paspalakis is a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Modern Optics, the Journal of Advanced Physics, the Journal of Photonics and Optoelectronics, the Journal of Materials, and Annals of Materials Science and Engineering. He has co-organized the International Symposium on Quantum Control and Light-Matter Interactions: Recent Computational and Theoretical Results in Corfu, Greece, in 2007. He was also scientific secretariat in the International Commission of Optics (ICO) Topical Meeting on Emerging Trends and Novel Materials in Photonics that was held in Delphi, Greece, in 2009. He has been a member of 15 European and Greek research projects (in 6 of them as project leader) and was national representative in EC COST project P11 entitled “Physics of linear, nonlinear and active photonic band gap materials”.
http://www.matersci.upatras.gr/en/Paspalakis
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PtoIBy4AAAAJ&hl=en