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Optical properties of colloidal plasmonic titanium nitride nanoparticles are examined with an eye on their photothermal via transmission electron microscopy and optical transmittance measurements. Single crystal titanium nitride cubic nanoparticles with an average size of 50 nm exhibit plasmon resonance in the biological transparency window. With dimensions optimized for efficient cellular uptake, the nanoparticles demonstrate a high photothermal conversion efficiency. A self-passivating native oxide at the surface of the nanoparticles provides an additional degree of freedom for surface functionalization., Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, 1 abstract figure

Strongly anisotropic media with hyperbolic dispersion can be used for claddings of plasmonic waveguides. In order to analyze the fundamental properties of such waveguides, we analytically study 1D waveguides arranged of a hyperbolic metamaterial (HMM) in a HMM-Insulator-HMM (HIH) structure. We show that hyperbolic metamaterial claddings give flexibility in designing the properties of HIH waveguides. Our comparative study on 1D plasmonic waveguides reveals that HIH-type waveguides can have a higher performance than MIM or IMI waveguides.

Recently we have suggested that two-dimensional broadband transformation optics devices based on metamaterial designs may be built using tapered waveguides. Here we review application of this principle to broadband electromagnetic cloaking, trapped rainbow, and novel microscopy devices., Comment: 18 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:0903.3437, arXiv:1006.0914, arXiv:1101.3366

We analyze electromagnetic field propagation through a random medium which consists of hyperbolic metamaterial domains separated by regions of normal "elliptic" space. This situation may occur in a problem as common as 9 micrometer light propagation through a pile of sand, or as exotic as electromagnetic field behavior in the early universe immediately after the electro-weak phase transition. We demonstrate that spatial field distributions in random hyperbolic and random "elliptic" media look strikingly different. This effect may potentially be used to evaluate the magnitude of magnetic fields which existed in the early universe., Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures, this version is accepted for publication in Optics Letters

Noble metals such as gold and silver are the primary metallic building blocks of metamaterial devices. Making subwavelength-sized structural elements from these metals seriously limits the optical performance of a device, however, and complicates the manufacturing process of nearly all metamaterial devices in the optical wavelength range. As an alternative to noble metals, we propose to use heavily-doped oxide semiconductors that offer both functional and fabrication advantages in the near-infrared. In this letter, we report an experimental demonstration of negative refraction in a near-infrared metamaterial device that is designed and fabricated using aluminum-doped zinc oxide., Comment: 4 figures + 1 supplementary document with 3 figures

We report on the experimental demonstration of the broadband "trapped rainbow" in the visible range using arrays of adiabatically tapered optical nano waveguides. Being a distinct case of the slow light phenomenon, the trapped rainbow effect could be applied to optical signal processing, and sensing in such applications as spectroscopy on a chip, and to providing enhanced light-matter interactions. As an example of the latter applications, we have fabricated a large area array of tapered nano-waveguides, which exhibit broadband "trapped rainbow" effect. Considerable fluorescence enhancement due to slow light behavior in the array has been observed., Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, Published in Applied Physics B

Despite strong experimental and theoretical evidence supporting superresolution imaging based on microlenses, imaging mechanisms involved are not well understood. Based on the transformation optics approach, we demonstrate that microlenses may act as two-dimensional fisheye or Eaton lenses. An asymmetric Eaton lens may exhibit considerable image magnification, which has been confirmed experimentally., Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures

We solve the equations governing light propagation in a negative-index material with embedded nonlinearly saturable gain material using a frequency-domain model. We show that available gain materials can lead to complete loss compensation only if they are located in the regions where the field enhancement is maximal. We study the increased enhancement of the fields in the gain composite as well as in the metal inclusions and show analytically that the effective gain is determined by the average near-field enhancement., Comment: Accepted to Optics Express. Manuscript contains additional comments

We demonstrate a thermally tunable optical metamaterial with negative permeability working in the visible range. By covering coupled metallic nanostrips with aligned nematic liquid crystals (NLCs), the magnetic response wavelength of the metamaterial is effectively tuned through control of the ambient temperature, changing the refractive index of LC via phase transitions. By increasing the ambient temperature from 20 degree to 50 degree, the magnetic response wavelength shifts from 650nm to 632nm. Numerical simulations confirm our tests and match the experimental observations well.

A well-established, silver fishnet design has been further miniaturized to function as a negative-index material at the shortest wavelength to date. By studying the transmittance, reflectance, and corresponding numerical simulations of the sample, we report in this paper a negative refractive index of -0.25 at the yellow-light wavelength of 580 nm.

We employ numerical simulations to show that highly localized, enhanced electromagnetic fields, also known as "hot spots," produced by a periodic array of silver nanoantennas can be spatially translated to the other side of a metal-dielectric composite superlens. The proposed translation of the hot spots enables surface-enhanced optical spectroscopy without the undesirable contact of molecules with metal, and thus it broadens and reinforces the potential applications of sensing based on field-enhanced fluorescence and surface-enhanced Raman scattering., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures

We demonstrate that metamaterial devices requiring anisotropic dielectric permittivity and magnetic permeability may be emulated by specially designed tapered waveguides. This approach leads to low-loss, broadband performance. Based on this technique, we demonstrate broadband electromagnetic cloaking in the visible frequency range on a scale ~100 times larger than the wavelength., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, corrected references

A new class of artificially structured materials called metamaterials makes it possible to achieve electromagnetic properties that do not exist in nature. In this paper we review the recent progress made in the area of optical metamaterials. It was predicted that nanostructured metamaterials could provide us with artificial magnetic response and negative refractive index at optical frequencies. To date, optical metamagnetics have been already fabricated to demonstrate artificial magnetic response in the infrared and across the entire visible spectrum, while metamaterials showing negative refractive index, also called negative index materials (NIM), have been demonstrated in the infrared and at the border with the visible spectral range. Here we report the results of a sample that displays NIM behavior for red light at a wavelength of 710 nm. This is the shortest wavelength so far at which NIM behavior has been observed for light (excluding a device built on surface plasmon polaritons). We also discuss the fabrication challenges and the impact of fabrication limitations, specifically surface roughness of the fabricated structures on the optical properties of the metamaterials., Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures. Separate page for each figure

Conceptual studies and numerical simulations are performed for imaging devices that transform a near-field pattern into magnified far-zone images and are based on high-order spatial transformation in cylindrical domains. A lens translating a near-field pattern from an almost circular input boundary onto a magnified far-field image at a flat output boundary is considered. The lens is made of a metamaterial with anisotropic permittivity and permeability both depending on a single 'scaling' parameter of the transformation. Open designs of the lens with a truncated body ('3/4-body' and '1/4-body' lenses) are suggested and analyzed. It is shown that the ideal full-lens and the '3/4-body' lens produce identical images. Numerical simulations of '1/4-body' designs indicate that further truncation of the lens could limit its per-formance. A light concentrator, "focusing" far-zone fields into a nanometer-scale area, is also considered., Comment: 3 pages, 4 color figures

We propose an approach to optical imaging beyond the diffraction limit, based on transformation optics in concentric circular cylinder domains. The resulting systems allow image magnification and minimize reflection losses due to the impedance matching at the input or output boundaries. While perfect impedance matching at both surfaces can only be obtained in a system with radius-dependent magnetic permeability, we demonstrate that comparable performance can be achieved in an optimized non-magnetic design.

In an electromagnetic cloak based on a transformation approach, reduced sets of material properties are generally favored due to their easier implementation in reality, although a seemingly inevitable drawback of undesired reflection exists in such cloaks. Here we suggest using high-order transformations to create smooth moduli at the outer boundary of the cloak, therefore completely eliminating the detrimental scattering within the limit of geometric optics. We apply this scheme to a non-magnetic cylindrical cloak and demonstrate that the scattered field is reduced substantially in a cloak with optimal quadratic transformation as compared to its linear counterpart., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures

A family of coupled nano-strips with varying dimensions is fabricated to obtain optical magnetic responses across the whole visible spectrum, from red to blue. The proposed approach provides one with a universal building block and a general recipe for producing controllable optical magnetism for various practical implementations., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures

This work is concerned with the experimental demonstration of a dual-band negative index metamaterial. The sample is double-negative (showing both a negative effective permeability and a negative effective permittivity) for wavelengths between 799 and 818 nm of linearly polarized light with a real part of refractive index of about -1.0 at 813 nm; the ratio -Re(n)/Im(n) is close to 1.3 at that wavelength. For an orthogonal polarization, the same sample also exhibits a negative refractive index in the visible (at 772 nm). The spectroscopic measurements of the material are in good agreement with the results obtained from a finite element electromagnetic solver for the actual geometry of the fabricated sample at both polarizations., Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures

Artificially structured metamaterials have enabled unprecedented flexibility in manipulating electromagnetic waves and producing new functionalities, including the cloak of invisibility based on coordinate transformation. Here we present the design of a non-magnetic cloak operating at optical frequencies. The principle and structure of the proposed cylindrical cloak are analyzed, and the general recipe for the implementation of such a device is provided. The cloaking performance is verified using full-wave finite-element simulations., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

Experimental demonstration of a negative permeability due to near-field coupling of periodic thin silver strips is presented. Two samples with different strip thicknesses are fabricated; optical measurements of the samples confirm our initial design projections by showing the real part of permeability to be about -1 for the sample with thinner strips and -0.8 for the sample with thicker strips at wavelengths of 770 nm and 720 nm., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

A key optical parameter characterizing the existence of negative refraction in a thin layer of a composite material is the effective refractive index of an equivalent, homogenized layer with the same physical thickness as the initial inhomogeneous composite. Measuring the complex transmission and reflection coefficients is one of the most rigorous ways to obtain this parameter. We dispute Grigorenko's statement (Optics Letters 31, 2483 (2006)) that measuring only the reflection intensity spectrum is sufficient for determining the effective refractive index. We discuss fundamental drawbacks of Grigorenko's technique of using a best-fit approximation with an a priori prescribed dispersive behavior for a given metamaterial and an 'effective optical thickness' that is smaller than the actual thickness of the sample. Our simulations do not confirm the Grigorenko paper conclusions regarding the negative refractive index and the negative permeability of the nanopillar sample in the visible spectral range., Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures

We present simulation results of a design for negative index materials that uses magnetic resonators to provide negative permeability and metal film for negative permittivity. We also discuss the possibility of using semicontinuous metal films to achieve better manufacturability and enhanced impedance matching., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

The race to engineering metamaterials comprising of a negative refractive index in the optical range has been fueled by the realization of negative index materials for GHz frequencies six years ago. Sheer miniaturization of the GHz resonant structures is one approach. Alternative designs make use of localized plasmon resonant metal nanoparticles or nanoholes in metal films. Following this approach, a negative refractive index has been realized in the optical range very recently. We review these recent results and summarize how to unambiguously retrieve the effective refractive index of thin layers from data accessible to measurements. Numerical simulations show that a composite material comprising of silver strips and a gain providing material can have a negative refractive index of -1.3 and 100% transmission, simultaneously.

An array of pairs of parallel gold nanorods is shown to have a negative refractive index n'=-0.3 at the optical communication wavelength of 1.5 micron. This effect results from the plasmon resonance in the pairs of nanorods for both the electric and magnetic components of light. The refractive index is retrieved from the direct phase and amplitude measurements for transmission and reflection, which are all in excellent agreement with our finite difference time domain simulations. The refraction critically depends on the phase of the transmitted wave, which emphasizes the importance of phase measurements in finding n'., Comment: an improved version (17 pages, 5 figures) with a new sample and additional measurements