Estimation of maximum temperature and thermal crosstalk between two active elements in a PIC: development of a thermal equivalent circuit.

The operating temperature plays a key role in the performance and lifetime of photonic integrated circuits (PICs). Miniaturization and increasing heat dissipation promote thermal crosstalk effects and pose additional challenges to the PIC designer. The European Photonics Industry Consortium recommends thermal modeling during design phase.

Envelope Dyadic Green's Function for Uniaxial Metamaterials.

We introduce the concept of the envelope dyadic Green's function (EDGF) and present a formalism to study the propagation of electromagnetic fields with slowly varying amplitude (EMFSVA) in dispersive anisotropic media with two dyadic constitutive parameters: the dielectric permittivity and the magnetic permeability. We find the matrix elements of the EDGFs by applying the formalism for uniaxial anisotropic metamaterials. We present the relations for the velocity of the EMFSVA envelopes which agree with the known definition of the group velocity in dispersive media.

Optimizing performance of metamaterial wormhole superabsorbers.

Transmission line-based metamaterials are used to realize and model the conjugate-impedance matched superabsorbers. Here, we formulate an analytical-numerical approach for maximizing the effective absorption cross section of the metamaterial wormhole superabsorber, under the goal of minimizing the complexity of the structure. Analytical expressions for the gradient of the absorption cross section as a function of the structural parameters are derived.

Ultrahigh Casimir interaction torque in nanowire systems.

We study the Casimir torque arising from the quantum electromagnetic fluctuations due to the interaction of two interfaces in a system formed by a dense array of metallic nanorods embedded in dielectric fluids. It is demonstrated that as a consequence of the ultrahigh density of photonic states in the nanowire array it is possible to channel the quantum fluctuations, and thereby boost the Casimir torque by several orders of magnitude as compared to other known systems (e.g.

Metamaterials controlled with light.

We suggest and verify experimentally the concept of functional metamaterials whose properties are remotely controlled by illuminating the metamaterial with a pattern of visible light. In such metamaterials arbitrary gradients of the effective material parameters can be achieved simply by adjusting the profile of illumination. We fabricate such light-tunable microwave metamaterials and demonstrate their unique functionalities for reflection, shaping, and focusing of electromagnetic waves.

Ultraconfined interlaced plasmons.

We describe a mesoscopic excitation in strongly coupled grids of metallic nanorods, resulting from the hybridization of weakly bounded plasmons. It is shown both theoretically and experimentally that the characteristic spatial scale of the interlaced plasmons is determined by geometrical features, rather than from the electrical length of the nanorods, and that due to their wide band nature, weak sensitivity to metallic absorption, and subwavelength mode sizes, such plasmons may have exciting applications in waveguiding in the nanoscale.