Polaritonics
Polaritonics is a branch of science and engineering that aims to bridge the scale and speed gap that exists between electronics (manipulation of charge flow: small) and photonics (manipulation of light flow: fast).
A Polariton is an excited state that is an admixture between an electromagnetic wave (photon) and an electronic excited state in a material (like an exciton, a plasmon).
Our research aims to devise new ways for creating and manipulating Polaritons for applications in energy conversion (renewables), sensing and optics.
We work on Plasmonics, hot carriers and Strong Coupling effects, using theoretical models, nano-fabrication & spectroscopy.
We develop simple, physically-insightful theoretical models for describing the optical properties of metallic nanostructures.
A Colloquium on our theoretical method can be found here, which is built on the idea of "particle resonances" or eigenmodes in a more formal mathematical language.
In this eigenmode theory, the shape of a metal nanoparticle dictates how it interacts with light. The theory also accounts for inter-particle interactions, in a way that is very similar to the situation encountered when creating molecules from atoms
Following the interaction of light with a metallic nano-scale (i.e. a billionth of a meter in length) structure, the process known as Landau damping can lead to the formation of "hot charge carriers".
These consist of positive and negative charges that posses excess (kinetic) energy which can be extracted out the nanoparticle for performing a function: for making sensors, initiating chemical change of increasing the temperature around the nano-structure
