Fun with Light: Strong Photon-Photon Interactions and Meta-Materials

Google Tech Talk July 10, 2009 ABSTRACT Fun with Light: Strong Photon-Photon Interactions and Meta-Materials Presented by Jung-Tsung Shen The lightsaber is a supercool gadget that all of us would like to get one. It exhibits many novel light phenomena, notably the light blades of two lightsabers could interact with each other. Unfortunately it takes an enormous amount of energy to achieve that. One of the main difficulties of making a lightsaber is that photons normally do not interact with each other. In the first part of the talk, I will describe how to make photons interact with each other, which enables the capability of using photons to control photons. This capability has many potential applications in quantum communication and information processing, and other novel optoelectronics devices. Moreover, the configuration is well-suited for on-chip all solid-state implementations. In the second part of the talk, I will briefly explain what metamaterials are, and some novel optical tricks they can play, such as Harry Potter's invisibility cloak and super lens. In particular, I will discuss the mechanisms and properties of a special class of metamaterials -- metamaterials with ultra-high refractive index. Such artificial structures will be useful in many applications such as subwavelength lithography and imaging, broadband slow-light, and sensitive interferometer. (* The talk is for general audience with no background in these fields. *) Dr. Jung-Tsung Shen is currently a research associate at Stanford University, working on photon transport in nano-photonics, metamaterials, plasmonics, and thermal and energy transport in nano-structures. He obtained his PhD degree in physics in 2003 from MIT. He was also a graduate scholar at Bell Labs from year 1998 -2001. He will be an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis in September this year.