Title: Photonic Nanostructures for Ultimate Control of Classical and Quantum Light
Abstract: The rise of quantum science and technology motivates photonics research to seek novel platforms to actively control light on the chip and to induce strong light-matter interactions to facilitate nonlinear and quantum behaviors at moderate light intensities. Nanoscale patterned photonic materials endows light with new degrees of freedom and offers an ideal platform to engineer optical fields at nanoscale and to manipulate photons on the fly.
In the first part of my talk, I will describe how structured optical modes carrying angular momentum can be introduced by symmetry engineering in silicon-based photonic nanostructures. I will present theoretical and experimental results that show how the angular momentum can be see as a pseudo-spin and synthetic gauge fields can be produced to selectively act on the optical spin-full guided modes [1], e.g., to produce single qubit gate operations. I will also show how the nonuniform nano-patterning in our systems allows creating photonic cavities radiating structured light into the far field [2]. Our experimental results demonstrating integration of quantum emitters into our silicon-on-insulator devices will be presented.
In the second part of my talk, I will discuss light-matter interactions in topological photonic nanostructures integrating van der Waals materials. First, I will show that, thanks to the structured nature of guided modes in our waveguides, one can selectively couple forward and backward propagating modes to the valley polarized excitons in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides [3]. The resultant exciton-polaritons thus allow a directional transfer of the valley degree of freedom and spin of excitons, which are guided along with the optical wave. A pathway towards active control of topological states in such systems with the use of reconfigurable gauge fields will be presented [4]. Second, I will demonstrate that a similar approach can be applied to phonons in mid-IR, where transverse vibrations in an hBN film can be directionally guided by the spin-polarized modes [5]. Our approach to use structured light on a chip to control light-matter interactions offers a new pathway to manipulate solid-state excitations and their degrees of freedom with optical modes, which can find application in spintronics/valleytronics and in quantum phononic devices.
[1] S. Kiriushechkina, et al., Nature Nano. (2023) (in press - arXiv:2211.00701).
[2] K. Chen et al., Science Advances 9, abq4243 (2023).
[3] M. Li, et al., Nature Commun. 12 4425 (2021).
[4] S. Guddala et al., Nature Commun., 12, 3746 (2021).
[5] S. Guddala et al., Science 374, 225-227 (2021).
About the Speaker: Dr. Khanikaev received his PhD degree in Physics from the M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University in 2003. After graduation Dr. Khanikaev spent five years at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of Toyohashi University of Technology, Japan, as a postdoctoral scholar and then as a senior researcher, where he worked on the topics of photonic crystals and plasmonic nanostructures. From 2009 Dr. Khanikaev held a position of a research associate at the Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin, where he contributed to the fields of infrared photonics and plasmonic and all-dielectric metamaterials, biosensing, and graphene photonics. In 2012 Dr. Khanikaev pioneered the concept of photonic topological insulators. In 2013 Dr. Khanikaev joined the City University of New York as a faculty member.
Dr. Khanikaev’s research focus is on design and experimental studies of nascent photonic nanostructures and nanomaterials. His current research interests and directions include quantum and topological phenomena and light-matter interactions in engineered optical nanomaterials for photonics applications. Presently Dr. Khanikaev is a Full Professor at the City College, Electrical Engineering Department, and at the Graduate Center and the Advanced Science Research Center of CUNY. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (Optica) class 2021, a recipient of the NSF Special Creativity Award (2021), and Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2022).