Scalable, economical, and stable sequestration of agricultural fixed carbon.

We describe a scalable, economical solution to the carbon dioxide problem. CO is captured from the atmosphere by plants, and the harvested vegetation is then buried in an engineered dry biolandfill. Plant biomass can be preserved for hundreds to thousands of years by burial in a dry environment with sufficiently low thermodynamic "" which is the relative humidity in equilibrium with the biomass.

Efficient spontaneous emission by metal-dielectric antennas; antenna Purcell factor explained.

The rate of spontaneous emission from an optical emitter can be greatly enhanced using a metallic optical antenna at the penalty of efficiency. In this paper we propose a metal-dielectric antenna that eliminates the tradeoff between spontaneous emission enhancement and radiative efficiency by using nanoscopic dielectric structures at the antenna tips. This tradeoff occurs due to Ohmic loss and is further exacerbated by electron surface collisions.

Physics successfully implements Lagrange multiplier optimization.

Optimization is a major part of human effort. While being mathematical, optimization is also built into physics. For example, physics has the Principle of Least Action; the Principle of Minimum Power Dissipation, also called Minimum Entropy Generation; and the Variational Principle.

Inverse design optimization for efficient coupling of an electrically injected optical antenna-LED to a single-mode waveguide.

Efficient high-speed nanoscale optical sources are required for low-power next-generation data communication. Here we propose an integrated antenna-LED on a single-mode optical waveguide. By leveraging inverse design optimization, we achieved a waveguide coupling efficiency of 94% and an antenna efficiency of 64%, while maintaining a high average enhancement of 144 - potentially enabling >100GHz direct modulation.

Ultraefficient thermophotovoltaic power conversion by band-edge spectral filtering.

Thermophotovoltaic power conversion utilizes thermal radiation from a local heat source to generate electricity in a photovoltaic cell. It was shown in recent years that the addition of a highly reflective rear mirror to a solar cell maximizes the extraction of luminescence. This, in turn, boosts the voltage, enabling the creation of record-breaking solar efficiency.