Understanding new regimes for light-matter interactions

Abstract

This thesis focuses on achieving new understanding of the principles and phenomena involved in the interaction of light with a variety of complicated material systems, including biomaterials and nanostructured materials. We will show that bone piezoelectricity may be a source of intense blast-induced electric fields in the brain, with magnitudes and timescales comparable to fields with known neurological effects, and may play a role in blast-induced traumatic brain injury. We will also shed new light on the localization of photons in a variety of complex microstructured waveguides. We will reveal the principles behind the design of single-polarization waveguides, including design strategies that did not seem to have been considered previously. Finally, we designed a 3D photonic crystal slab structure to exhibit negative-index behavior at visible wavelengths, which was fabricated and experimentally demonstrated by our collaborators to show negative refraction with, to our knowledge, the lowest loss at visible wavelengths to date.