Novel photonic phenomena in nanostructured material systems with applications and mid-range efficient insensitive wireless energy-transfer

Abstract

A set of novel mechanisms for the manipulation of light in the nanoscale is provided. In the class of all-dielectric material systems, techniques for the suppression of radiative loss from incomplete-photonic-bandgap structures are developed: the cancellation of radiation channeled into discrete modes of the substrate, for resonant small-modal-volume cavities with patterned substrates, and the broadband mode-matching across the coupling interface, for large-bandwidth butt-coupled devices. Moreover, a hybrid plasmonic-dielectric material platform is introduced, able to localize light counter intuitively in low-index regions, by employing the unique subwavelength and cutoff properties of polaritonic waves, and to support dispersionless (to unusually-high orders) broadband-slow or stopped subwavelength light, by utilizing a simple planar multilayered dielectric structure. This platform can achieve a significant reduction in all (temporal, spatial and energy) light-scales and could enable compact and efficient optical buffers and active devices. A method for mid-range efficient and insensitive wireless energy-transfer is proposed. A condition of 'strong coupling' of resonances is identified as necessary and sufficient for efficient energy-exchange, and is shown to be satisfied at mid-range distances by carefully-designed high-Q subwavelength resonances of realistic systems both theoretically and experimentally, in the latter case by powering a 60W light-bulb wirelessly across a 2m-distance using two 60cm-diameter resonant objects and with 45% efficiency. A technique for further efficiency enhancement and radiation suppression is suggested, based on employing destructive interference between the coupled-objects' radiated far-fields. The scheme is also found fairly insensitive to the near-presence of extraneous objects, especially when utilizing the special class of magneto-quasi-static resonances.

(cont.) Applications of the proposed wireless-powering method can be found in both the macro- and micro-worlds, and range among industrial, technological, medical, consumer and more.